i 



'>*" i 



■'M 



in 



p^a^*^ /VU'(5w^'-w-w 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 



THE POETRY OF POPE. 



TWO LECTURES DELIVERED TO THE LEEDS MECHANICS' 
INSTITUTION AND LITERARY SOCIETY, 
DECEMBER 5th AND 6th, 1850. • 



BY \ 



THE RIGHT HONORABLE 



THE EARL OF CARLISLE, 



^A^-<H^-C/^ 



(lord MORPETH.) 



NEW-YOEK: 

G. P. PUTNAM, 155 BROADWAY. 
1851. 

•■] 



11G85 



Hakkr, (lonwiN & Co., Printers, 
No. 1 fc^pnice St., New-York. 








V ^' 



TO THE MEMBERS OF THE 

YORKSHIRE UNION OF MECHANICS' INSTITUTES, 

BEFORE A BRANCH OF WHICH 

THESE LECTURES WERE READ, 

THEY ARE NOW RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, 

BY THEIR ASSOCIATE AND WELL-WISHER, 

^ CARLISLE. 

Christmas, 1850. 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 



It may be known to some of those whom I have the 
pleasure to see around me, that when ch-cumstances 
to which I need not further allude, occasioned a breach, 
temporary indeed, and soon repaired, in my connection 
with the West Riding of Yorkshire, — when, as the 
phrase goes, some of your neighbors, and probably 
of yourselves, had given me leave to go upon my tra- 
vels, — I thought I could make no better use of this 
involuntary leisure than by acquiring some personal 
knowledge of the United States of America. I ac- 
cordingly embarked in the autumn of the year 1841, 
and spent about one whole year in North America, 
having within that period passed nearly over the 



TRAVELS IN AMKIilCA. 



length and brcadtli of the Republic, trod at least the 
soil of twenty-two out of the twenty-six States of 
which the Union was then composed, and paid short 
visits to the Queen's dominions in Canada, and to the 
Island of Cuba. I determined to keep a journal dur- 
ing my travels, and only at the end of them to decide 
what should become of it when it was completed. I 
found it was written in too hurried and desultory a man- 
ner, and was too much confined to my own daily pro- 
ceedings, to make it of interest to the public at large ; 
still more strongly I felt that after having been re- 
ceived with uniform civility and attention, nay, I may 
say, with real warmth and openness of heart, I should 
not wish, even where I had nothing but what was most 
favorable to communicate, immediately to exhibit my- 
self as an inquisitive observer of the interior life to 
which I had been admitted ; and this very feeling 
would probably have disqualified me for the office of 
an impartial critic. Now, however, that above eight 
years have elapsed since my return, in turning over 
the pages then written, it has seemed to me allowable 
to endeavor, for a purpose like the present, to convey 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 7 

a few of the leading impressions which I derived from 
the surface of nature and society as they exhibited 
themselves in the New World. 

t It must follow necessarily from such limits as could 
be allowed to me on an occasion of this kind, that any 
account which I can put together from materials so 
vast and so crowded, must be the merest superficial 
skimming of the subject that can be conceived. All I 
can answer for is, that it shall be faithful to the feel- 
ings excited at the moment, and perfectly honest as far 
as it goes. I must premise one point with reference 
to what I have just now glanced at, — the use of indi- 
vidual names. I came in contact with several of the 
pubhc men, the historical men they will be, of the 
American Republic. I shall think myself at hberty 
occasionally to depart in their instance from the rule 
of strict abstinence which I have otherwise prescribed 
to myself, and to treat them as public property, so long 
as I say nothing to their disadvantage. On the other 
hand, the public men of the United States are not 
created iaultless beings, any more than the public men 
of other countries ; it must not, thei'efore, be consid- 



8 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

ered when I mention with pleasure any thing which 
redounds to their credit, that I am intending to present 
you with their full and complete portraits. 

It was on the 21st day of October, upon a bright 
crisp morning, that the Columbia steam-packet, upon 
which I was a passenger, turned the lighthouse outside 
the harbor of Boston. The whole effect of the scene 
was cheerful and pleasing ; the bay is studded with 
small islands, bare of trees, but generally crowned 
with some sparkling white building, frequently some 
public establishment. The town rises well from the 
water, and the shipping and the docks wore the look 
of prosperous commerce. As I stood by some Ameri- 
can friends acquired during the voyage, and heard 
them point out the familiar villages, and villas, and in- 
stitutions, with patriotic pleasure, I could not alto- 
gether repress some slight but not grudging envy of 
those who were to bring so long a voyage to an end 
in their own country, amidst their own family, within^ 
then- own homes. I am not aAvare I ever again expe- 
rienced, during my whole American sojourn, the pecu- 
liar feeling of the stranger. It was, indeed, dispelled 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 9 

at the moment, when their flag ship, the Columbus, 
gave our Columbia a distinguished, and, I thought, 
touching reception ; the crew manned the yards, cheer- 
ed, and then the band played, first " God Save the 
Queen," and then " Yankee Doodle." I spent alto- 
gether, at two different interxals, about a month in 
Boston. 

I look back with fond recollection to its well-built 
streets — the swelling dome of its State-House — the 
pleasant walks on what is termed the common — a park, 
in fact, of moderate size, in the centre of the city, 
where I made my first acquaintance with the bright 
winter sunsets of America, and the peculiar transpa- 
rent green and opal tints which stripe the skies around 
them — the long wooden causeways across the inner 
harbor, which rather recalled St. Petersburgh to my 
recollection — the newly-erected granite obelisk on a 
neighboring height, which certainly had no affinity 
with St. Petersburgh, as it was to mark the spot, sa- 
cred to an American, of the battle of Bunker's Hill — 
the old elm tree, at the suburban university of Cam- 
bridge, beneath which Washington drew his sword in 
1* 



10 TKAVELS IN AMKBIC'A. 

order to take command of the national army — the 
shaded walks and glades of Mount Auburn, the beau- 
tiful cemetery of Boston, to which none that we yet 
have can be compared, but which 1 trust before long 
our Chadwicks and Paxtons may enable us to imitate, 
and perhaps to excel. These are some of my external 
recollections of Boston ; but there are some fonder 
still, of the most refined and animated social inter- 
course — of hospitalities which it seemed impossible to 
exhaust — of friendships which I trust can never be ef- 
faced. Boston appears to me, certainly, on the whole, 
the American town in wliich an Englishman of culti- 
vated and literary tastes, or of j)]iilanthropic pursuits, 
would feel himself most at home. The residence here 
was rendered peculiarly agreeable to me by a friend- 
ship with one of its inhabitants, which I had previ- 
ously made in England ; he hardly yet comes within 
my rule of exception, but I do not give up the notion 
of his becoming one of the historical men of his coun- 
try. However, it is quite open for me to mention some 
of those with whom, mainly through his introduction, 
I here became acquainted. There was Mr. Justice 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 11 . 

Story, whose reputation and authority as a commenta- 
tor and expounder of law, stand high wherever law is 
known or honored, and who was, what at least is more 
generally attractive, one of the most generous and sin- 
gle-hearted of men. He was an enthusiastic admirer 
of this country, especially of its lawyers; how he 
would kindle up and flow on if he touched upon Lord 
Hardwick or Lord Mansfield — " Sir," as an American 
always begins, " on the prairies of lUinois this day 
Lord Mansfield administers the law of commerce." 
He had also a very exalted opinion of the judgments 
of Lord StoAvell, which his own studies and practice 
had led him thoroughly to appreciate ; and I may 
permit myself to say that he had formed a high esti- 
mate of the judicial powers of Lord Cottenham. I 
must admit one thing, when he was in the room few 
others could get in a word ; but it was impossible to 
resent this, for he talked evidently not to bear down 
others, but because he could not help it. Then there 
was Dr. Channing. I could not hear him preach, as 
his physical powei'S were nearly exhausted ; but on 
one or two occasions I was admitted to his house. 



12 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

You found a fragile frame, and a dry manner, but you 
soon felt tliat you were in a presence in -whicli nothing 
that was impure, base, or selfish could breathe at ease. 
There was the painter, Alston, a man of real genius, 
who suffices to prove that the domain of the fine arts, 
though certainly not hitherto the most congenial to 
the American soil, may be successfully brought, to use 
their current phrase, into annexation with it. These, 
alas ! have since my visit, all been taken away. In 
the more immediate department of letters theve are 
happily several who yet remain — Mr. Bancroft, the 
able and accomplished historian of his own country — 
Mr. Ticknor, who has displayed the resources of a well- 
stored and accomplished mind in his recent work on 
the literature of Spain — Mr. Longfellow, with whose 
feeling and graceful poetry many must be acquainted — 
Mr. Emerson, who has been heard and admired in this 
country — and I crown my list with Mr. Prescott, the 
historian of Ferdinand and Isabella, of Mexico and of 
Peru, with respect to whom, during the visit he paid 
to England in the past summer, I had the satisfaction 
of witnessinar how all that was most eminent in this 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 13 

country confirmed the liigli estimate I had myself 
formed of his head, and the higher one of his heart. 
' The public institutions of Boston are admirably con- 
ducted. The Public or Common Schools there, as I 
believe in New-England generally, are supported by a 
general rate, to which all contribute, and all may pro- 
fit by. I am not naturally now disposed to discuss the 
question, how far this system would bear being trans- 
planted and ingrafted on our polity ; but it would be 
uncandid if I did not state that the universality of the 
instruction, and the excellence of what fell under my 
own observation, presented to my mind some mortify- 
ing points of contrast with what we have hitherto ef- 
fected at home. It is well known that a large propor- 
tion of the more Avealthy and cultivated part of the 
society of Boston belong to the Unitarian persuasion ; 
but a considerable mimber of the middle classes, and 
especially of the rural population of New-England, 
comprising the six Northern States of the Union, still 
retain much of the Puritan tenets and habits of their 
immediate ancestors, — their Pilgrim Fathers. Before 
I leave Boston, let me add one observation on a lighter 



14 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

topic. I lodged at the Tremont Hotel, which was ad- 
mirably conducted, like very many of those imposing 
establishments in the chief cities of the Union. Here 
I learnt that one is apt to receive false impressions at 
first ; I was striick with the clean, orderly, agile ap- 
pearance of the waiters. " The Americans beat us 
hollow in waiters," was my inner thought ; on inquir- 
ing I found that of the twenty -five waiters in the house, 
four were English and twenty-one Irish. I could not 
help wishing that a large number of the Irish might 
come and be waiters for a little while. 

Within three or four days of my landing 1 grew im- 
patient to see the Falls of Niagara without loss of 
time ; if any sudden event should have summoned me 
home, I felt how much I should have grudged cross- 
ing tlie Atlantic without having been at "Niagara, and 
I also wished to look upon the autumn tints of the 
American Forest, before the kaves, already beginning 
to fall, had entirely disappeared. The Western Rail- 
way, which appealed to me the best constructed that 
I saw in America, took me to Albany, a distance of 
200 miles. The railway carriages, always there called 



TRAVKLS IN AMERICA. 15 

cars, consist of long rooms, rather like a dining-room 
of a steam-packet, with a stove inside, often a most 
desirable addition in the American winter, and you can 
change your seat or walk about as you choose. They 
are generally rougher than our railways, and the whole 
getting up of the line is of a ruder and cheaper cha- 
racter ; they do not impede the view as much as with 
us, as they make no scruple of dashing across or along- 
side of the main street in the towns or villages through 
which they pass. But I ought to remark about this 
as about every thing else, that the work of progress 
and transformation goes on with such enormous rapidi- 
ty, that the interval of eight years since my visit will 
probably have made a large portion of my remarks 
thoroughly obsolete. The New-England country 
through which we passed looks cheerful, interspersed 
with frequent villages and numerous churches — bear- 
ing the mark at the same time of the long winter and 
barren soil with which the stout Puritan blood of Brit- 
ain has so successfully contended ; indeed, the only 
staple productions of a district which supplies seamen 
for all the Union, and ships over all the world, are 



16 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

said to be ice and granite. Albany is the capital of 
the state of New- York, — the Empire State, as its in- 
habitants love to call it, and it is a name which it de- 
serves, as fairly as our own old Yorkshire would deserve 
to be called the Empire County of England. It is ra- 
ther an imposing town, rising straight above the Hud- 
son river, gay with some gilded domes, and many 
white marble columns, only they are too frequently ap- 
pended to houses of very staring red brick. From 
Albany to Utica the railroad follows the stream of the 
Mohawk, which recalls the name of the early Indian 
dwellers in that bright valley, still retaining its swell- 
ing outline of wood-covered hills, but gay with pros- 
perous villages and busy cultivation. I was perhaps 
still more struck the next evening, though it was a 
more level country, where the railway passes in the 
midst of the uncleared or clearing forest, and suddenly 
bursts out of a pine glade or cedar swamp into the 
heart of some town, probably four, three, or two yars 
old, with tall white houses, well lighted shops, billiard- 
rooms, &c. ; and emerging, as .we did, from the dark 
shadows into the full moonlight, the wooden spires, 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 17 

domes, and porticoes of the infant cities looked every 
bit as if they had been hewn out of the marble quar- 
ries of Carrara. I am aware that it is not the received 
opinion, but there is something both in the outward 
aspect of this I'egion and the general state of society 
accompanying it, which to me seemed eminently poeti- 
cal. What can be more striking or stirring, despite 
the occasional rudeness of the forms, than all this en- 
terprise, energy, and life welling up in the desert? 
At the towns of Syracuse, of Auburn, and of Roches- 
ter, I experienced the sort of feeling which takes away 
one's breath ; the process seemed actually going on 
before one's eyes, and one hardly knows whether to 
think it as grand as the Iliad, or as quaint as a harle- 
quin farce. I will quote the words I wrote down at 
the time : — 

" The moment is not come for me yet, if it ever 
should come, to make me feel myself warranted in 
forming speculations upon far results, upon guarantees 
for future endurance and stability ; all that I can now 
do is to look and to marvel at Avhat is before my- eyes. 
I do not think I am deficient in relish for antiquity and 



18 TRAVELS IN AMEKICA. 

association ; I know that I am English, not in a pig- 
headed adhesion to every thing there, but in heart to 
its last throb. Yet I cannot be unmoved or callous to 
the soarings of Young America, in such legitimate and 
laudable directions too ; and I feel that it is already not 
the least bright, ami may be the most enduring title of 
my countiy to the homage of mankind, that she has 
produced such a jjeople. May God employ them both 
for his own high glory !" 

I am bound here in candor to state that I think 
what I first saw in America was, with little exception, 
the best of its kind ; such was the society of Boston — 
such was the energy of progress in the western portion 
of the State of New-York. 

At Rochester, an odd coincidence occurred to me, 
striking enough I think to be mentioned, though it only 
concerned myself. After the arrival of the railway 
carriage, and the usual copious meal of tea and meat 
that ensues, I had been walking about the town, which 
dates only from 1812, and then contained 20,000 in- 
habitants, and as I was returning to the hotel, I saw 
the word Theatre written up. Wishing to see every 



TRAVKLS IN AMERICA. 19 

thing in a new country, I climbed up some steep stairs 
into what was httle better than a garret, where I found 
a rude theatre, and ruder audience, consisting chiefly 
of boys, who took delight in pelting one another. 
There was something, however, at which I had a right 
to feel surprised. In a playhouse of strollers, at a town 
nearly five hundred miles in the interior of America, 
which, thirty years before, had no existence, thus 
coming in by the merest chance, I saw upon the drop- 
scene the most accurate representation of my own 
house, Naworth Castle, in Cumberland. 

A great improvement has recently occurred in the 
nomenclature of this district ; formerly a too classical 
surveyor of the State of New- York had christened — I 
used the w^rong term, had heathenized, to make a new 
one, — all the young towns and villages by the singu- 
larly inapplicable titles of Utica, Ithaca, Palmyra, 
Rome ; they are now reverting to the far more appro- 
priate, and, I should say, more harmonious Indian 
names, indigenous to the soil, such as Oneida, Onon- 
daga, Cayuga. 

I thought my arrival at Niagara very interesting. 



20 \ TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

We had come to Lockport, where there is a chain of 
magnificent locks, on the Erie Canal, one of the great 
public works of America, and which has done much to 
enrich this Empire State of New- York. The surplus 
of the receipts enabled them to execute a variety of 
other public works. We arrived too late for the usual 
public conveyance. The proprietor of the stage coach 
agreed to give me, with one or two other Englishmen, 
a lumber wagon to convey us to the Falls. The Colonel, 
for he was one, as I found the drivers of the coaches 
often were, drove his team of four horses himself. I 
generally found the stage-coach driving in the United 
States indescribably rough, but the drivers very adroit 
in their steerage, and always calling their horses by 
their names, and addressing them as reasonable beings, 
to which they seemed quite to respond. Altogether, 
the strangeness of the vehicle, the cloudless beauty of 
the night, the moonlight streaming through the forest 
glades, the meeting a party of the Tuscarora Indians, 
who still have a settlement here, the first hearing the 
noise of Niagara about seven miles off, and the growing 
excitement of the nearer approach, gave to the Avhole 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 21 

drive a most stirring and enjoyable character. When 
I arrived at the hotel, the Cataract House, I would not 
anticipate by any moonlight glimpses the full disclo- 
sures of the coming day, but reserved my first visit for 
the clear liofht and freshened feelings of the morninar. 
I staid five days at Niagara on that occasion ; I visited 
it again twice, having travelled several thousands of 
miles in each interval. I have thus looked upon it in 
the late autumn, in the early spring, and in the full 
summer. Mrs. Butler, in her charming work on 
America, when she comes to Niagara says only, " Who 
can describe that sight?" and, with these words, fin- 
ishes her book. There is not merely the difficulty of 
finding adequate words, but there is a simphcity and 
absence, as I should say, of incidents in the scenery, 
or, at least, so entu-e subordination of them to the main 
great spectacle, that attempts at description would 
seem inapphcable as well as impotent. Nevertheless I 
have undertaken, however inadequately, the attempt to 
place before you the impressions which I actually de- 
rived from the most prominent objects that I saw in 
America. How, then, can I wholly omit Niagara? 



22 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

The first view neither in the least disappointed, or sur- 
prised, but it wholly satisfied me. I felt it to be com- 
plete, and that nothing could go beyond it ; volume, 
majesty, might, are the first ideas which it conveys ; on 
nearer and more famihar inspection I appreciated other 
attributes and beauties — the emerald crest — the seas of 
spray — the rainbow wreaths. Pictures and panoramas 
had given me a correct apprehension of the form and 
outline ; but they fail, for the same reason as language 
would, to impart an idea of the whole effect, which is 
not picturesque, though it is sublime ; there is also the 
technical drawback in painting of the continuous mass 
of white, and the line of the summit of the Fall is as 
smooth and even as a common mill-dam. Do not 
imagine, however, that the effect could be improved 
by being more picturesque ; just as there are several 
trivial and unsightly buildings on the banks, but Niagara 
can be no more spoiled than it can be improved. You 
would, when on the spot, no more think of complaining 
that Niagara was not picturesque, than you would re- 
mark, in the shock and clang of battle, that a tnimpet 
sounded out of tune. Living at Niagara Avas not like 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 23 

ordinary life ; its not over loud, but constant solemn 
roar, has in itself a mysterious sound : is not the highest 
voice to which the Universe can ever listen, compared 
by inspiration to the sound of many waters? The 
whole of existence there has a dreamy but not a frivo- 
lous impress ; you feel that you are not in the common 
world, but in its sublimest temple. 

I naturally left such a place and such a life with 
keen regret, but I was already the last visitor of the 
year, and the hotels were about to close. I was told 
that I had already been too late for the best tints of 
autumn (or fall, as the Americans picturesquely term 
that season), and that they were at no time so vivid 
that year as was usual ; I saw, however, great richness 
and variety of hue ; I think the bright soft yellow of 
the sugar maple, and the dun red of the black oak, 
were the most remarkable. These and the beech, the 
white cedar, the hemlock spruce, the hickory, Avith oc- 
casionally the chestnut and walnut, seemed the pre- 
vailing trees in all this district. I can well imagine a 
person being disappointed in the American Forest; 
trees, such as those at Wentworth and Castle Howard 



24 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

(may I say ?) seem the exception, and not the rule. 
The mass of them run entirely to height, and are. too 
thick together, and there is a great deal too much dead 
fir ; still there is a great charm and freshness in the 
American forest, derived partly perhaps from associa- 
tion, when you look through the thick tracery of its 
virgin glades. 

On my going back I paid two visits at country 
houses ; one to an old gentleman, Mr. Wadsworth, 
most distinguished in appearance, manner, and under- 
standing, who had settled where I found him fifty years 
before, when he had not a white neighbor within thirty 
miles, or a flour mill within fifty ; he lived entirely sur- 
rounded by Indians, who have now disappeared. On 
some occasion, there had been a review of a corps of 
militia. A neighboring Indian Chief had been present, 
and was observed to be very dejected ; Mj-. Wadsworth 
went up to him, and offered refreshment, which was 
usually very acceptable, but lie declined it. Upon be- 
ing pressed to say what was the matter, he answered 
with a deep sigh, pointing to the east, " You are the 
rising sam " — then to the west, " We are the settmg." 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. ^5 

The face of the country is now, indeed, changed; a 
small flourishing town, the capital of the county, 
stretches from the gate ; and the house overlooks one 
of the richest and best cultivated tracts in America, the 
valley of the Genesee. I fancy that quotations of 
the price of Genesee wheat are familiar to the fre- 
quenters of our corn markets. My host was one of 
the comparatively few persons in the United States 
who have tenants under them holding farms ; among 
them I found three Yorkshiremen from my own 
neighborhood, one of whom showed me what he called, 
the gainest way to the house, which I recognized as a 
genuine Yorkshire term ; he told me that his landlord 
was the first nobleman in the country, which is clearly 
not an Americanism. While on this topic I may men- 
tion that, on another occasion, I was taken to drink tea 
at a farmer's house in New England. We had been 
regaled most hospitably, when the farmer took the 
friend who had brought me aside, and asked what part 
of England Lord Morpeth came from ? " From York- 
shire, I believe," said my friend. " Well, I should not 
2 



26 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

have thought that from his manner of talking," was 
the reply. 

My other visit was to Mr. Van Buren, who had been 
the last President of the United States, and who, I 
suspect, shrewdly reckoned on being the next. It 
seemed, indeed, at that time to be the general expecta- 
tion among his own, the Democratic, or as they were 
then commonly called, the Loco-foco party. He was 
at that time living on his farm of Kinderhook ; the 
house was modest and extremely well ordered, and 
nothing could exceed the courtesy or fulness of his 
conversation. He abounded in anecdotes of all the 
public men of his country. In his dining room Avere 
pictures of Jefferson and General Jackson, the great 
objects of his political devotion. On my return through 
Albany, I had an interview with Mr. Seward, then for 
the second time Governor of the State of New-York. 
I find that I noted at the time, that he was the first 
person I had met who did not speak slightingly Df the 
Abolitionists ; he thought they were gradually gaining 
ground. He had already acted a spirited part on 
points connected with slavery, especially in a contest 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 27 

with the Legislature of Virginia concerning the delivery 
of fugitive slaves. 

I approached the city of New- York by the Hudson. 
The whole course of that river from Albany, as seen 
from the decks of the countless steamers that ply along 
it, is singularly beautiful, especially where it forces a 
passage through the barrieis of the Highlands, which, 
however, afford no features of rugged grandeur like our 
friends in Scotland ; but though the forms are steep 
and well-defined, their rich green outlines of waving 
wood, inclosing in smooth many-curved reaches the 
sail-covered bosom of the stately river, present nothing 
but soft and smiling images. I then took up my win- 
ter quarters at New- York. I thought this, the com- 
mercial and fashionable, though not the political capital 
of the Union, a veiy brilliant city. To give the best 
idea of it, I should describe it as something of a fusion 
between Liverpool and Paris — crowded quays, long 
perspectives of vessels and masts, bustling streets, gay 
shops, tall white houses, and a clear brilliant sky over- 
head. There is an absence of solidity in the general 
appearance, but in some of the new buildings they are 



28 TRAVELS IN AMERICA, 

successfully availing themselves of theii' ample re- 
sources in white marble and granite. At the point of 
the Battery, where the long thoroughfare of Broadway, 
extending some miles, pushes its green fringe into the 
wide harbor of New- York, with its glancing waters 
and graceful shipping, and the limber, long, raking 
masts, which look so different from our own, and the 
soft swelling outline of tlie receding shores ; it has a 
special character and beauty of its own. I spent about 
a month here very pleasantly ; the society appeared to 
me on the whole to have a less solid and really refined 
character than that of Boston, but there is more of an- 
imation, gayety, and sparkle in the daily life. In point 
of hospitality, neither could outdo the other. Keeping 
to my rule of only mentioning names which already 
belong to fame, I may thus distinguish the late Chan- 
cellor Kent, whose commentaries are well-known to 
professional readers. He had been obliged, by what I 
think the very unwise law of the State of New-Y^rk, 
to retire from his high legal office at the premature age 
of sixty, and there I found him at seventy-eight, full of 
animation and racy vigor, which, combined with great 



TRAVKLS IN AMERICA. 29 

simplicity, made his conversation most agreeable. 
Washington Irving, a well-known name both to Amer- 
ican and English ears, whose nature appears as gentle 
and genial as his works — I cannot well give nigher 
praise: Mr. Bryant, in high repute as a poet, and 
others. I had the pleasure of making acquaintance 
with many of the families of those who had been the 
foremost men in their covintry, Hamiltons, Jays, Liv- 
ingstons. I lodged at the Astor House, a large hotel 
conducted upon a splendid scale ; and I cannot refrain 
from one, I fear rather sensual, allusion to the oyster 
cellars of New-York. In no part of the world have I 
ever seen places of refreshment as attractive — every 
one seems to eat oysters all day long. What signifies 
more, the public institutions and schools are there also 
extremely well conducted. The churches of the dif- 
ferent denominations are very numerous and well filled. 
It is my wish to touch very lightly upon any point 
which among us, among even some of us now here, 
may be matter of controversy ; I, however, honestly 
think that the experience of the United States does not 
as yet enable them to decide on either side the argu- 



30 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

ment between the Establislied and Voluntary systems 
in religion ; take tlie towns by themselves, and I think 
the voluntary principle appears fully adequate to satisfy 
all religious exigencies ; then it must be remembered 
that the class which makes the main difficulty else- 
where, scarcely if at all exists in America ; it is the 
blessed privilege of the United States, and it is one 
which goes very far to counterbalance any drawbacks 
at which I may have to hint, that they really have not, 
as a class, any poor among them. A real beggar is 
what you never see. On the other hand, over their 
immense tracts of territory, the voluntary system has 
not sufficed to produce sufficient religious accommoda- 
tion ; it may, however, be truly questioned, whether 
any establishment would be equal to that function. 
This is, however, one among the many questions which 
the repubhcan experience of America has not yet solved. 
As matters stand at present, indiflference to religion 
cannot be fairly laid to her charge ; probably religious 
extremes are p\ished farther than elsewhere ; there 
certainly is a breadth and universality of religious lib- 
erty which I do not regard without some degree of envy. 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 31 

Upon my progress southward, I made a compara- 
tively short halt at Philadelphia. This fair city has 
not the animation of New-York, but it is eminently well 
built, neat and clean beyond parallel. The streets are 
all at right angles with each other, and bear the names 
of the different trees of the country ; the houses are of 
red brick, and mostly have white marble steps and 
silver knockers, all looking bright and shining under the 
effect of copious and perpetual washing. It still looks 
like a town constructed by Quakers, who were its orig- 
inal founders ; but by Quakers who had become rather 
dandified. The waterworks established here are de- 
servedly celebrated ; each house can have as much 
water as it likes, within and without, at every moment, 
for about 18s. a year. I hope our towns will be emu- 
lous of this great advantage. I think it right to say, 
that in our general arrangements for health and clean- 
liness we appear to me very much to excel the Ameri- 
. cans, and our people look infinitely healthier, stouter, 
rosier, jollier ; the greater proportion of Americans 
Avith whom you converse would be apt to tell you they 
were dyspeptic, whether principally from the dry 



32 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

quality of tlieir atmosphere, the comparatively little 
exercise which they take, or the rapidity with which 
they accomplish their meals, I will not take upon my- 
self to pronounce. There is one point of advantage 
which they turn to account, especially in all their new 
towns, which is, that their immense command of space 
enables them to isolate almost every house, and thus 
secure an ambient atmosphere for ventilation. In my 
first walk through Philadelphia I passed the glittering 
white marble portico of a great banking establishment, 
which, after the recent crash it had sustained, made 
me think of whited sepulchres. Near it was a pile, 
with a respectable old English appearance, of far nobler 
association ; this was the State House, where the 
Declaration of American Independence was signed — 
one of the most pregnant acts of which history bears 
record. It contains a picture of William Penn and a 
statue of Washington. While I was there, a sailor, 
from the State of Maine, with a very frank and jaunty 
air, burst into the room, and in a glow of ardent pat- 
riotism inquired, " Is this the room in which the Decla- 
ration of Independence was signed ?" When he found 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 33 

that I was an Englishman, he seemed, with real good 
breeding, to be afraid that he had grated on my feel- 
ings, and told me that in the year 1814 our flag had 
waved over the two greatest capitals of the world, 
Washington and Paris. I looked with much interest 
at the great Model Prison of the separate system. I 
was favorabl)' impressed Avith all that met the eye, but 
I refrain from entering upon the vexed question of 
comparison between this and the silent and other sys- 
tems, as I feel how much the solution must depend 
upon ever recurring experience. The poor-house, like 
that at New- York, is built and administered on a very 
costly scale, and also has a great proportion of foreign- . 
ers as inmates, and of the foreigners a great proportion 
Irish. This seems to enhance the munificence of the 
provision for destitution ; at the same time it is not to 
be forgotten that the foreign labor is an article of nearly 
essential necessity to the progress of the country. On 
the only Sunday which I spent in Philadelphia, I went 
to a church which was not wanting in associations ; the 
communion plate had been given by Queen Anne, and 
I sat in the pew of General Washington. I was told 
2* 



34 TRAVELS IX AMERICA. 

by some one that his distinguished contemporary, Chief 
Justice Marshall, said of him, that in contradiction to 
what was often thought, he was a man of decided 
genius, but he was such a personification of wisdom, 
that he never put any thing forward which the occasion 
did not absolutely require. It seemed to me that there 
was at Philadelphia a greater separation and exclusive- 
ness in society, more resemblance to what Avould be 
called a fashionable class in European cities, than I had 
found in America elsewhere. 

My next brief pause was at Baltimore. At a halt 
on the railroad on the way thither, I heard a conductor 
or guard say to a negro, " I cannot let you go, for you 
are a slave." This was my first intimation that I had 
crossed the border which divides Freedom from Slavery. 
I quote from the entry which I made upon noting these 
words that evening : — " Declaration of Independence 
which I read yesterday — pillar of Washington which 
I have looked on to-day — what are ye ?" 

I must now give myself some little vent. It was a 
subject which I felt during my whole sojourn in 
America, as I feel it still, to be paramount in interest 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA, 35 

to every other. It was one on which I intended and 
endeavored to observe a sound discretion ; we have 
not ourselves long enough washed off the stain to give 
us the right to rail at those whom we had originally 
inoculated with the pest ; and a stranger abundantly 
experiencing hospitality could not with any propriety 
interfere wantonly upon the most delicate and difficult 
point of another nation's policy. I could not, however, 
fail often and deeply to feel, in the progress of my in- 
tercourse with many in that country — " Come not, my 
soul, into their secret ; to their counsel, my honor, be 
not thou united." At the same time I wished never 
to make any compromise of my opinion. I made it a 
point to pay special respect to the leading Abolitionists 
— those who had labored or suffered in the cause — 
when I came within reach of them ; at Boston, I com- 
mitted the more overt act of attending the annual anti- 
slavery fair, which then was almost considered some- 
thing of a measure. I was much struck in the distin- 
guished and agreeable companies which I had the good 
fortune to frequent, with a few honorable exceptions, 
at the tone of disparagement, contempt, and anger 



36 TKAVELS IN AMERICA. 

with which the AboUtionists were mentioned ; just as 
any patrician company, in this country, would talk ot 
a Socialist or a Red Repubhcan. I am, of course, 
now speaking of the free Northern States ; in the 
South an Abolitionist could not be known to exist. 
My impression is, that in the subsequent interval the 
dislike, the anger, has remained, and may, probably, 
have been heightened, but that the feeling of slight, of 
ignoring (to use a current phrase) their very existence, 
must have been sensibly checked. There were some 
who told me that they made it the business of their 
lives to superintend the passage of the runaway slaves 
through the free States ; they reckoned, at that time, 
that about one thousand yearly escfiped into Canada. 
I doubt whether the enactment and operation of the 
Fugitive Slave Bill will damp the ardor of their exer- 
tions. It may be easy to speak discreetly and plausi- 
bly about the paramount duty of not contravening the 
law ; but how would you feel, my countrymen, if a 
fugitive was at your feet and the man-hunter at the 
door? I admit that the majesty of the law is on one 
side ; but the long deep misery of a whole human life 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 31 

is on the other. What you ought to feel is fervent 
gratitude to the Power which has averted from your 
shores and hearths this fearful trial, and, let me add, a 
heartfelt sympathy with those who are sustaining it. 

At Baltimore I thought there was a more pictu- 
resque disposition of ground than in any other city of the 
Union : it is built on swelling eminences, commanding 
views of the widening Chesapeake, a noble arm of the 
sea. There are an unusual number of public monu- 
ments for an American town, and hence it has been 
christened the Monumental City. I found the same 
hospitality which had greeted me ever}^ where, and the 
good living seemed to me carried to its greatest height ; 
they have in perfection the terrapin, a kind of land 
tortoise, and the canvas-back duck, a most unrivalled 
bird in any country. With reference to the topic I 
have lately touched upon, a slaveholders' convention 
was being held at the time of my visit for the State of 
Maryland. They had been led to adopt this step by 
their apprehensions both of the increase of the free 
colored population, and what they termed their demor- 
alizing action on the slaves. The language, as reported. 



38 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

did not seem to have been very violent, but they very 
nearly subjected to lynch-law a man whom they sus- 
pected to be a reporter for an abolitionist newspaper. 
I trust we are not going to copy that system in this 
country. I dined with the daughter of Charles Car- 
roll, who, when signing the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, was told by a bystander that he would incur no 
danger, as there were so many of the same name — 
" of Carrollton," he added to his name, and I think it 
is the only one upon the document which has any ap- 
pendage. Being thus nobly fathered, it is rather curi- 
ous that this venerable lady should have been the mo- 
ther of three English Peeresses. The Roman Catholic 
Archbishop of Baltimore was one of the company : 
he Avore his long violet robes, which I have never seen 
done on similar occasions, either in Ireland or in this 
country. 

From Baltimore I transferred myself to Washing- 
ton, the seat of Government and capital of the Ameri- 
can Union. I never saw so strange a place ; it aflbrds 
the strongest contrast to the regularity, compactness, 
neatness, and animation of the Atlantic cities I had 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 39 

hitherto visited. It is spread over a very large space, 
in this way justifying the expression of some one who 
wished to pay it a compHment, but did not know very 
well what attribute to select, so he termed it a " city 
of magnificent distances," over which it extends, or 
rather spraAvls ; it looks as if it had rained houses at 
random, or like half a dozen indifferent villages scat- 
tered over a goose common. Here and there, as if to 
heighten the contrast with the meanness of the rest, 
there are some very handsome public buildings ; and 
the American Capitol, the meeting-place of the Legis- 
lature and the seat of empire, though not exempt from 
architectural defects, towers proudly on a steep ascent, 
commanding the subject town and the course of the 
broad Potomac, which makes the only redeeming fea- 
ture of the natural landscape. In short, while almost 
every other place which I saw in America, gives the 
impression of life and progress, Washington not only 
appears stagnant, but retrograde. No busy commerce 
circulates in its streets, no brilliar^t shops diversify its 
mean ranges of ill-built houses ; but vefj^ few equi- 
pages move along its wide, splashy, dreary avenues. I 



40 TKAVELS IN AMERICA. 

saw it, too, in the prime of its season, during the sit- 
ting of Congress. When it is not sitting the members 
of the Legislature and officers of the Government dis- 
pose themselves over the breadth of the Union, and 
leave the capital to the clerks of the public offices, and 
does it not seem profanation to say it ? — the slaves, 
who are still permitted to inhabit what should right- 
fully be the Metropolis of Freedom. It is at least 
gratifying to know that, in the last session of Congress, 
the slave trade has been abolished in the district of 
Columbia, the small portion of territory immediately 
annexed to Washington. When they are here, the 
members of Congress are mostly packtsd together in 
large and very inferior boarding-houses, a great por- 
tion of them not bringing their wives and families over 
the immense distances they have to traverse ; hence it 
also happens that Washington will appear to the stran- 
ger not merely one of the least thriving but also the 
least hospitable of American cities. I spent nearly a 
month there, and it was the only place in which I 
(what is termed) kept house, that is, I resided in pri- 
vate lodgings, and found my own food, a method of 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA, 41 

life, howev^er, which, in the long run, has more com- 
fort and independence than that of the huge hotels. 
It was a contrast, however, to the large armies of 
waiters to which I had grown accustomed, to have no 
one in the house but an old woman and a negro boy, 
the first of Avhom my English servant characterized as 
cross, and the second as stupid, I believe it was the 
policy of the founders of the Republic to place the 
seat of Government where it would not be liable to be 
distracted by the turmoil of commerce, or over-awed 
by the violence of mobs ; we have heard very lately of 
speculations to remove the seat of the French Govern- 
ment from Paris. Another cause which has probably 
contributed to check any designs for the external im- 
provement and development of Washington, must 
have been the doubt how far in a nation which is ex- 
tending its boundaries westward at so prodigious a rate, 
it will be desirable or possible long to retain as the seat 
of Government a spot which will have become so little 
central. 

What gave most interest to my stay at Washington 
naturally was the opportunity of attending the sittings 



42 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 



of Congress. The interior of the Capitol is imposing, 
as well as the exterior ; in the Centre Hall there were 
five large pictures, illustrating the prominent points of 
American history, which must be more agreeable to 
American than to British eyes. There is also a fine 
colossal statue of Washington, who is universally and 
not unduly called the father of his country. The 
Chamber where the Senate meets is handsome and 
convenient. The general aspect of the assembly, 
which (as is well known) shares largely both in the 
legislative and executive powers of the constitution, is 
grave and decorous. The House of Representatives, 
the more popular branch of the Government, returned 
by universal suffrage, assemble in a chamber of very 
imposing appearance, arranged rather like a theatre, in 
shape like the arc of a bow, but it is the worst room 
for hearing I ever was in ; we hear complaints occa- 
sionally of our Houses of Parliament, old and new, but 
they are faultless in comparison. In parts of the 
House it is impossible to hear any body, in others it 
answers all the purposes of a whispering gallery, and 
I have heard members carry on a continuous dialogue 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 43 

while a debate was storming around them. Both in 
the Senate and the House every member has a most 
commodious arm-chair, a desk for his papers, and a 
spitting-box, to which he does not always confine him- 
self. I came very often, and it was impossible to sur- 
pass the attention I received ; some member's seat in 
the body of the House was always given to me, and I 
was at liberty to remain there during the whole of the 
debate, listen to what was going on, or write my letters, 
as I chose. The palpable distinction between them 
and our House of Commons I should say to be this, 
we are more noisy, and they are more disorderly. They 
do not cheer, they do not cough, but constantly seve- 
ral are speaking at a time, and they evince a contemp- 
tuous disregard for the decisions of their speaker. 
They have no recognized leaders of the different par- 
ties, the members of Government not being allowed to 
have seats in either House of Congress, and the diffe- 
rent parties do not occupy distinct quarters in the 
chamber, so that you may often hear a furious wran- 
gle being carried on between two nearly contiguous 
members. -« While I was at Washington, the question 



44 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

of slavery, or at least of points connected with slavery, 
gave the chief color and animation to the discussions 
in the House of Representatives. Old Mr. Adams, 
the ex-president of the United States, occupied, with- 
out doubt, the most prominent position ; he presented 
a very striking appearance, standing up erect at the 
age of seventy-three, having once filled the highest 
post attainable by an American citizen, with trembling 
hands and eager eyes, in defence of the right of peti- 
tion, — the right to petition against the continuance of 
slavery in the district of Columbia, with a majority of 
the House usually deciding against him, and a portion 
of it lashed into noise and storm. I thought it was 
very near being, and to some extent it was, quite a 
sublime position, but it rather detracted from the gran- 
deur of the effect at least, that his own excitement was 
so great as to pitch his voice almost into a screech, 
and to make him more disorderly than all the rest. 
He put one in mind of a fine old game-cock, and occa- 
sionally showed great energy and power of sarcasm. 
I had certainly an opportunity of forming my opinion, 
as I sat through a speecli of his that lasted three days ; 



Travels in America. 4S 

but then it is fair to mention that the actual sittings 
hardly last above three hours a day — about four, din- 
ner is ready, and they go away for the day, differing 
much herein from our practice ; and on this occasion 
they frequently allowed Mr. Adams to sit down to rest. , 
All the time I believe he was not himself for the dis- 
continuance of slavery, even in the district of Colum- 
bia, but he contended that the Constitution had ac- 
corded the free right of petition. One morning he 
presented a petition for the dissolution of the Union, 
which raised a great tempest. Mr. Marshall, of Ken- 
tucky, a fine and graceful speaker, moved a vote of 
censure upon him. Another member, whom I need 
not name, the ablest and fiercest champion whom I 
heard on the southern or slaveholder side, made a 
most savage onslaught on Mr. Adams ; then up got 
that " old man eloquent," and no one could have re- 
proached him with not understanding how to speak 
even daggers. His brave but somewhat troublous 
spirit has passed from the scenes upon which he played 
so conspicuous a part, but he has left behind him some 
words of fire, the sparks of which are not yet extinct. 



46 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

Nothing came of all this stir; I used to meet Mr. 
Adams at dinner while it went on, very calm and un- 
disturbed. After seeing and bearing what takes place 
in some of these sittings, one is tempted to think that 
the Union must break up next morning ; but the flame 
appeared generally to smoulder almost as quickly as it 
ignited. The debates in the Senate, during the same 
period, were dignified, business-like, and not very lively ; 
so it may be judged which House had most attraction 
for the passing traveller. I heard Mr. Clay in the 
Senate once, but every one told me that he was labor- 
ing under feebleness and exhaustion, so that I could 
only perceive the great charm in the tones of his voice. 
I think this most attractive quality was still more per- 
ceivable in private intercourse, as I certainly never met 
any public man, either in his country or in mine, always 
excepting Mr. Canning, who exercised such evident 
fascination over the minds and affections of his 
friends and followers, as Henry Clay. I thought his 
society most attractive, easy, simple, and genial, 
with great natural dignity. If his countrymen 
made better men Presidents, I should applaud their 



tfeAVELS IN AMERICA. 47 

virtue in resisting the spell of his eloquence and at- 
tractions ; when the actual list is considered, my respect 
for the discernment elicited by Universal Suffrage does 
not stand at a very high point. Another great man, 
Daniel Webster, I could not hear in either House of 
Congress, because he then filled, as he does now, the 
high office of Secretary of State ; but it is quite enough 
to look on his jutting dark brow and cavernous eyes, 
and massive forehead, to be assured that they are the 
abode of as much, if not more, intellectual power than 
any iiead you perhaps ever remarked. For many, if 
not for all reasons, I am well content that he should 
be again at the head of the American Cabinet, for I 
feel sure that while he is even intensely American, he 
has an enlightened love of peace, and a cordial sympa- 
thy with the fortunes and glories of the old, as well as 
the new Anglo-Saxon stock. The late Mr. Calhoun, 
who impressed most of those who were thrown in his 
way with a high opinion of his ability, his honesty, and, 
I may add, his impracticability, I had not the good 
fortune to hear in public, or meet in private society. 
It is well known that his attachment to the maintenance 






48 TRAVELS IN AxMERICA. 

of slavery went so far as to lead him to declare that 
real freedom could not be maintained without it. 
Among those who at that time contributed both to the 
credit and gayety of the society of Washington, I can- 
not forbear adding the name of Mr. Leo^are, then the 
Attorney-General of the Union, now unhappily, like 
too many of those whom I have had occasion to men- 
tion, no longer living. He appeared to me the best 
scholar, and the most generally accomplished man, I 
met in all the Union. I may feel biassed in his favor, 
for I find among my entries, " Mr. Legare spoke to- 
night of Pope as he ought." 

I have not mentioned what might be thought of a 
very prominent object at Washington — the President 
of the United States. He resides for his term of office 
at a substantial plain building, called the White House. 
Mr. Tyler filled the office when I was there, and ap- 
peared a simple, unaffected person. Washington is 
the headquarters of another branch of the Constitu- 
tion, which works perhaps with less of friction and 
censure than any other, the Supreme Court of Judica- 
ture. The large federal questions between State and 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 49 

State give great weight and interest to its proceedings. 
I heard an interesting cause between the States of 
Maryland and Pennsylvania ; it was an action to try 
the constitutional vahdity of an act of the State of 
Pennsylvania, which gave a trial by jury to the fugitive 
slave. How this subject pursued and pervaded every 
thing ! It was argued with great ability on both sides ; 
it was ultimately ruled against the power of the free 
States to pass such an act ; and the recent Fugitive 
Slave Law may probably have arisen out of some such 
debatable questions of right ; at all events, it has en- 
tirely swept away the intervention of a jury. 

The last day of my abode at Washington was spent 
becomingly at Mount Vernon, the residence, and now 
the grave, of Washington, It is well placed on a 
wooded hill above the noble Potomac, here a mile and 
a half broad. The tomb is a sad affair for such a man ; 
it has an inscription upon it denoting that it was erectd 
by John Strutters, marble mason ! It is placed under 
a glaring red building, something between a coach- 
house and a cage ; the Senate once procured the con- 
sent of the family to have it removed to the Capitol, 
3 



50 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

when a bricklayer, a laborer, and a cai-t arrived to take 
it off one morning, at which their indignation naturally- 
rose. There are few things remarkable in the house, 
except the key of the Bastille sent by General Lafayette 
to General Washington, and a sword sent to him by 
Frederick the Great, with this address, "From the 
Oldest General of the age to the Best." I was grati- 
fied to see a print from my picture of the Three Maries. 
Did it ever excite the interest and the piety of Wash- 
ington ? 

I made a rapid journey, by steamboat and railroad, 
through the States of Virginia and North Carolina ; 
the country wore a universal impress of exhaustion, 
desertion, slavery. It appears to be one of the trials 
or the cupidity of man, that slavery, notwithstanding 
all its drawbacks, has a certain degree of adaptation, 
not I trust in the mercy of God, a necessary adaptation, 
to the culture of fertile soils in hot dimates ; but in 
sterile or exhausted soils, where the energy of man 
must be called out to overcome difficulties, it is evident 
that slavery has no elastic spring or restorative power. 

Richmond, the capital of Virginia, has a certain re- 



I'RAVELS IN AMERICA. 51 

semblance in position to its namesake in Surrey ; I saw 
the local Legislature in session ; it was very full of 
coarse-looking farmers from the western portion of the 
State; it struck me that the acute town lawyers must 
manage matters much as they choose. I never saw 
a country so hopeless as all that I passed through in 
North Carolina — a flat, sandy waste of pines, with 
scarcely a habitation. I spent a fortnight at Charles- 
ton, the capital of her more energetic sister. South 
Carolina ; this town and State may be looked upon as 
the headquarters of the slaveholding interest ; and 
repeatedly, when they have thought the policy of the 
North too encroaching either upon questions relating 
to what they term their peculiar institutions, which is 
their euphonious description of slavery, or when we 
should feel a juster sympathy Avith them, upon ques- 
tions relating to the protection of the northern manu- 
factures in opposition to a liberal commercial policy, 
they have not only held the very highest tone in favor 
of a dissolution of the Union, but have proceeded to 
overt acts of resistance. I am bound to say that I spent 
my time there very pleasantly ; there was much gayety 



62 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

and unbounded hospitally. I have made no disguise 
of what my opinions upon slavery were, are, and ever 
must be ; but it would be uncandid to deny that the 
planter in the Southern States has much more in his 
manner and mode of intercourse that resembles the 
English country gentleman than any other class of his 
countrymen ; he is more easy, companionable, fond of 
country life, and out-of-door pursuits. I went with a 
remarkably agreeable party to spend a day at the rice 
plantation of one of their chief proprietors; he had 
the credit of being an excellent manager, and his ne- 
groes, young and old, seemed well taken care of and 
looked after ; he repelled the idea — not of educating 
them — that is highly penal by the law of the State, 
but of letting them have any religious instruction. I 
was told by others that there was considerable im- 
provement in this respect. Many whom I met enter- 
tained no doubt that slavery would subsist among 
them for ever ; others were inclined to think that it 
would wear out. While I was willing not to shut my 
eyes to any of the more favorable external symptoms 
or mitigations of slavery, other indications could not 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 53 

come across my path without producing deep repug- 
nance. On the very first night of my arrival, I heard 
the deep sound of a curfew bell ; on inquiry I was told, 
that after it had sounded every night at about nine 
o'clock, no colored person, slave or free — mark that — 
might be seen in the streets. One morning, accord- 
ingly, I saw a great crowd of colored persons in the 
street, and I found they were waiting to see a large 
number of their color, who had been taken up the 
night before on their return from a ball, escorted in 
their ball-dresses from the jail to the court-house. 
Indeed, it was almost principally with relation to the 
free blacks that the anomalous and indefensible work- 
ing of the system appeared there to develope itself. I 
was told that the slaves themselves looked down upon 
the free blacks, and called them rubbish. I must not 
omit to state that I saw one slave auction in the open 
street, arising from the insolvency of the previous 
owner ; a crowd stood round the platform, on Avhich 
sat the auctioneer, and beside him were placed in suc- 
cession the lots of from one to five negroes. The 
families seemed to be all put up together, but I ima- 



54 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

gine they must often be separated ; they comprised 
infants and all ages. As far as I could judge, they 
exhibited great indifference to their changing destiny. 
I heard the auctioneer tell one old man, whom I could 
have hardly distinguished from a white person, that he 
had been bought by a good master. One could not help' 
shuddering at the future lot of those who were not the 
subjects of this congratulation. 

I went into the Head Court of Justice at Charleston, 
and found seven persons present ; five of them were 
judges, one was the lawyer addressing them, the other 
was the opposing counsel, who was walking up and 
down the room. I attended a meeting of the conven- 
tion of the Episcopal Church of South Carohna ; 
whether it may be for encouragement or warning 
to those who wish for the introduction or revival of 
such synods at home, I mention the point then under 
discussion; it was how far it was proper to show 
deference for the opinion of the Bishop. 

In point of neatness, cleanliness, and order, the slave- 
holding States appeared to stand in about the same 
relation to the free, as Ireland does to England ; every 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 55 

:' thing appears slovenly, ill-arranged, incomplete ; win- 
I dows do not shut, doors do not fasten ; there is a 
/ superabundance of hands to do every thing, and little 
is thoroughly done. The country round Charleston 
for scores, and I believe hundreds of miles, is perfectly 
flat, and full of swamps, but there I had the first indi- 
cations of the real genius of the South, in the white 
houses lined with verandahs, the broad-leaved deep 
green magnolias and wild orange trees in the gardens, 
the large yellow jessamine and palmetto in the hedges, 
and the pendent streamers of gray moss on the under 
branches of the rich evergreen live-oak, which supplies 
unrivalled timber for ship-building. 

I left Charleston in a small American mail-packet, 
for the Island of Cuba. I must not dwell on the voy- 
age, which, from our being much becalmed, lasted 
twelve days, double its due ; we were long off the low 
flat coast of Georgia and Florida, and I felt inchned to 
say with Goldsmith — 

" And wild Altama echoed to our woe." 

On the 14 th of March we passed under the impreg- 



♦ 



56 TRAVELS IN AMEKICA, 

nable rock of the Castle, called the Moro, and, answer- 
ing the challenge from its terraced battlements, we 
found ourselves in the unrivalled harbor of the Havana. 
How enchanting, to the senses at least, were the three 
weeks I spent in Cuba ! How my memory turns to its 
picturesque forms and balmy skies. During my whole 
stay, the thermometer scarcely varied from 76* to 18° 
in the shade. I am disposed to wonder that these re- 
gions are not more resorted to by our countrymen for 
enjoyment of life, and escape from death. Nothing 
was ever so unlike either Europe or America as the 
Havana ; at least I had never been in Spain, the mother 
country, which I suppose it most resembles. The 
courts of the gleaming white houses have a Moorish 
look, the interiors are much covered with arabesques, 
and on the outside towards the street they have im- 
mense open spaces for windows, in which they gener- 
ally find it superfluous to put any glass ; the carriages 
are called Volantes, and look as if they had been in- 
tended to carry Don Quixote. Then how delicious it 
used to be, late in the evening, under a moonlight we 
can scarcely imagine, to sit in the square called the 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 5*7 

Place of Arms, where in a space flanked by some 
gleaming palm-trees, and four small fountains, a gay 
crowd listened to excellent music from a Spanish mili- 
tary band. It is certainly the handsomest town I saw 
in the New World, and gives a great idea of the luxury 
and splendor of Spain in her palmy days. The billiard 
rooms and ice saloons streamed with light; the great 
theatre is as large and brilliant as almost any in Europe. 
Again, how full of interest were some visits I paid in 
the interior, both to Spanish and American households. 
I cannot condense my impressions of the scenery better 
than by repeating some short stanzas which with such 
influences around me I could not help perpetrating. I 
hope that while they bear witness to the intoxicating 
eftects of the landscape and the climate, they do not 
wholly leave out of view the attendant moral. 

Ye tropic forests of unfading green, 
Where the palm tapers, and the orange glows. 

Where the light bamboo weaves her feathery screen, 
And her tall shade the matchless seyba throws: 

Ye cloudless ethers of unchanging blue, 

Save as its rich varieties give way 
To the clear sapphire of your midnight hue, 

The burnished azxu'e of your perfect day. 

3* 



58 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

Yet tell me not my native skies are bleak, 
That flushed with liquid wealth, no cane-fields wave; 

For Virtue pines, and Manhood dares not speak, 
And Nature's glories brighten round the Slave. 

Among the coimtiy-houses I visited was tiie sugar 
estate of one of tlie chief Creole nobles of the island 
(I do not know wliether my hearers will be aware that 
the proper meaning of a Creole is a person of European 
descent born in America) : I was treated there with 
the most refined and courteous hospitality ; and what 
a view it was from the terrace of golden cane-fields, 
and fringing woods, and azure sea ! The treatment of 
the domestic slaves appeared kind and affectionate, and 
all the negro children on the estate repeated their cate- 
chism to the priest, and were then brought in to dance 
and romp in the drawing-room. Generall}' there does 
not appear to be the same amount of repulsion between 
the white and colored races as in the United States, 
and there is the pleasant spectacle of their being mixed 
together in the churches. Still the crying conclusive 
fact remains, that the average negro population died 
off in ten years, and had to be recruited by continuous 
importations, which are so many breaches of the solemn 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 59 

. treaties between Spain and us. On one coffee estate 
which I visited (and generally the coffee cultivation 
is far lighter than that of the sugar cane), a still darker 
shade was thrown upon the system, as I was told from 
a most authentic source that there was great difficulty 
in preventing mothei's from killing their offspring. 
General Valdez, who was captain-general of the island 
during my visit, is thought to have exerted himself 
honestly in putting down the slave trade. I believe it 
has been as much encouraged as ever under some of 
his successors. The politics of Cuba are rather deli- 
cate ground to tread upon just now, and are likely to 
be continually shifting ; it appeared to me that all the 
component parties held each other in check, like the 
people who are all prevented from killing each other 
in the farce of the Critic, The despotism and exclu- 
siveness of the mother country were complete ; every 
one gave the same picture of the corruption and de- 
morahzation which pervaded every department of ad- 
fL ministration and justice. The Creoles are prevented 
from rising against this system, from dread of the 
negroes rising against them, over and above the large 



60 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

Spanish force always kept on foot there ; the Ameri- . 
cans, who have got possession of a large proportion of 
the estates, do not like to hazard any attempt at an- 
nexation, without at least adequate aid from other 
quarters, as they would have to deal with the Spanish 
army, some of the Creoles, and all the negroes ; and 
the negroes, the most deeply wronged party of any, 
would bring down on themselves, in case of any gene- 
ral rising amongst them, the Spaniards, Creoles, Amer- 
icans within, and Americans without. May the 
providence of God reserve for these enchanting 
shores more worthy destinies than they have ever yet 
enjoyed ! 

I availed myself of the magnificent accommodation 
of one of our West India line-of-packet steamers, 
which deposited us at the mouth of the Mississippi. 
I repined at the course of the vessel, receding from 
the sun, and at first I thought every thing looked 
dingy, after the skies and vegetation of the tropics. I 
missed especially the palm, the cocoa, and the seyba, 
but there was still the orange tree, and, what they 
have not in Cuba, the magnolia, a forest tree in full 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 61 

blossom : the sugar plantations of Louisiana seemed 
kept in very trim order : we passed the ground made 
memorable by the victory of General Jackson over 
the English, and soon drew up among the numerous 
tiers of masts and steamboats that line the crescent 
outline of New Orleans. 

The good I have to say of New Orleans must be 
chiefly confined, to the St. Charles Hotel, which is the 
most splendid of its kind that I saw even in the Uni- 
ted States. When it is at its full complement 560 dine 
there every day — 350 of whom sleep in the house ; 
there are 160 servants, 7 French cooks; all the wait- 
ers, whites — Irish, English, French, German, and 
American ; the very intelhgent proprietor of the hotel 
told me he thought the Irish made the best ; he has 
them all together every day at noon, Avhen they go 
through a regular drill, and rehearse the service of a 
dinner. Nothing can be more distinct than the ap- 
pearance of the American and French portions of the 
town ; the American is laid out in broad streets, high 
houses, and large stores ; the French in narrow streets, 
which suits a warm climate better perhaps, and a great 



62 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

proportion of one-storied houses, which they thought 
a better security agaist hurricanes. I spent my time 
not unpleasantly, particularly two days at the planta- 
' tion of an opulent proprietor, where the slaves seemed 
the subject of much thoughtful attention as far as 
their physical condition is concerned : the weather at 
this season, — the middle of April, — was delicious, but 
it is the last place in the world I should choose for a 
residence. For long periods the climate is most nox- 
ious to human life ; it is the occasional haunt of the 
yellow fever, the river runs at a higher level than the 
town, and the putrid sAvamp is ever ready to ooze 
through the thin layer of rank soil above it; and, 
worse than any meiely natuial malaria, the dregs of 
the worst type of the French and American character, 
notwithstanding the more wholesome elements by 
which their influence is undoubtedly tempered, impart 
a moral taint to the social atmosphere. 

Though in my journey henceforward I passed over 
immense spaces, and saw great varieties of scenes and 
men, yet as it became now more of a matter of real 
travelhng, and did not show me so much of the inner 



TBAVELS IN AMERICA. 63 

social life, it will be a relief to you to hear, especially- 
after the lengthened trespass I have already made on 
your attention, that I shall get over the remaining 
ground far more rapidly. I went from New Orleans 
to Louisville on board the Henry Clatj steamer, 1500 
miles, which lasted six days; the first 1100 were on 
the Mississippi. It is impossible to be on the Father 
of Waters, as I believe the name denotes, without some 
emotion ; its breadth hardly appears so imposing as 
that of many far inferior streams ; at New Orleans it 
must be under three-quarters of a mile, but its width 
rather paradoxically increases as you rece 'e from its 
mouth ; its color is that of a murky, pulpy, yellowish 
mud, but still its full deep brimming volume pleases, 
chiefly, I suppose, from the knowledge that thus it 
rolls on for 5000 miles, and waters a valley capable 
of feeding the world ; there is little break of outline, 
but the continuous parallel hues of forest are partially 
dotted, first by the sugar fields of Louisiana, then by 
the cotton inclosures of the States of Mississippi and 
Tennessee, then by the rich meadows of Kentucky. 
For the last 400 miles we left the sovereign river, and 



64 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

struck up the Ohio, christened by the French the beau- 
tiful river, and deserving the name from the swelling 
wooded slopes which fringe its current ; its soft native 
name of Ohio, means " the gently flowing." Louis- 
ville is a flourishing town ; thence I dived into the in- 
terior of Kentucky, and paid a visit of two or three 
days to Mr. Clay, at his country residence of Ashland. 
The qualities which rivet the Senate and captivate his 
adherents, seemed to me both heightened and softened 
by his frank, courteous, simple intercourse. He lives 
with his family in a modest house, among fields of deep 
red soil and the most luxuriant grass, growing under 
very thriving and varied timber, the oak, sycamore, 
locust-tree, cedar, and that beautiful ornament of Ame- 
rican woods, the sugar maple. He likes showing some 
English cattle. His countrymen seem to be in the habit 
of calling upon him without any kind of previous in- 
troduction. Slavery, generally mild in the pastoral 
State of Kentucky, was certainly seen here in its least 
repulsive guise ; Mr. Clay's own negro servant, Charles, 
was much devoted to him ; he took him with him on 
a tour into Canada, and when some abolitionists there 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 65 

wanted him to leave his master, " Not if you were to 
give me both your provinces," was the reply. 

My next halt was at the White Sulphur Springs in 
the western portion of Virginia. The season had not 
yet commenced, early in May, so I was in sole posses- 
sion of the place. One of my southern friends had 
kindly placed a delightful little cottage at jny disposal, 
and I enjoyed in the highest degree the unwonted re- 
pose in the solitude of virgin forests, and the recesses 
of the green Alleghanies. Here were my brief Fare- 
well lines to the small temple-like cupola over the 
bright sulphur well from which I used to drink many 
times in the day : — 

Hail dome ! whose unpresuming circle guards 
Virginia's flowing fountain : still may health 
Hover above thy crystal uni, and bring 
To cheeks unused their bloom ! may Beauty still 
Sit on thy billowy swell of wooded hills, 
And deep ravines of verdure ; may the axe, 
Improvement's necessary pioneer, 
Mid forest solitudes, still gently pierce, 
Not bare their leafy bowers ! This votiye lay, 
Like wreath of old on thy white columns hung, 
Albeit of scentless flowers from foreign soil, 
Scorn not, and bid the Pilgrim pass in peace, 



66 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

I had, at this thue, mucli travelhng in the stage 
coaches, and I found it amusing to sit by the different 
coachmen, who were generally youths from the East- 
ern States, pushing their way in life, and full of fresh 
and racy talk. One said to me, lamenting the amount 
of debt which the State through which we were tra- 
velhng had incurred, " I suppose your State has no 
debt," — a compliment I could not quite appropriate. 
Another, who probably came from New- York, •^here 
they do not like to use the word Master in speaking 
of their employers, but prefer an old Dutch name, Boss, 
said to me, " I suppose the Queen is your Boss now." 

I again turned my face to the West, and passed 
Cincinnati, which, together with all that I saw of the 
State of Ohio, seemed to me the part of the Union 
where, if obliged to make the choice, I should like best 
to fix my abode. It has a great share of all the civili- 
zation and appliances of the old settled States of the 
East, with the richer soil, the softer climate, the fresher 
spring of life, which distinguish the West. It had be- 
sides to me the great attraction of being the first Free 
State which I reached on my return from the region of 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 67 

Slavery, and the contrast in the appearance of prosperity 
and progress is just what a friend of freedom would 
always wish it to be. One of my visitors at Cincinnati 
told me he remembered when the town only contained 
a few log cabins ; when I was there it had 50,000 in- 
habitants. I shall not easily forget an evening view 
from a neighboring hill, over loamy cornfields, woody 
knolls, and even some vineyards, just where the Miami 
River discharges its gentle stream into the ample Ohio. 
I crossed the States of Indian^ and Illinois, looked for 
the first time on the wide level and waving grass of a 
prairie — stopped a short time at St. Louis, once a French 
station, now the flourishing capital of the State of Mis- 
souri. I passed the greatest confluence of rivers on the 
face of our globe, where the Mississippi and Missouri 
blend their giant currents ; the whole river ought pro- 
perly to have gone by the name of the Missouri, as it 
is by far the most considerable stream, its previous 
course before the junction exceeding the entire course 
of the Mississippi both before and after it ; it is the Mis- 
souri, too, which imparts its color to the united stream, 
and for two or three miles you distinguish its ochre^ 



68 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

colored waters as tliey line the hitherto clear current 
of the Upper Mississippi. At Jacksonville, in Illinois, 
I was told a large colony of Yorkshiremen were set- 
tled, and I was the more easily induced to believe it, 
as it seemed to me about the most thriving and best 
cultivated neighborhood I had seen. I embarked at 
Chicago on the great lakes : but here I must desist from 
pursuing my devious wanderings on those large inland 
seas, and on the opposite shore of Canada. Many thou- 
sands of miles have I st^jamed away over Lakes Michi- 
gan, Huron, Erie, Ontario ; the Rideau Canal, the St. 
Lawrence and Ottawa rivers ; some of these I traversed 
twice, and they supplied some of the most interesting 
and picturesque features of my long journeyings. I 
should have scrupled in any case to touch upon the 
politics of Canada, and indeed ray pauses at any fixed 
spot were too short to qualify me for the attempt, even 
if it had been desirable. It is a magnificent region, es- 
pecially its Avestern portion — happy in climate, soil, and 
scenery. I will, however, only attempt to dash off two 
slight sketches from my Canadian recollections. Here 
is the first. I stood in a terraced garden on the sum- 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 69 

mit of a high promontorj, running with a steep angle 
into the basin made by the river St. Lawrence, of which 
it is no exaggeration to say that the water is as clear, 
bright, and, above all, green as any emerald ; here, up- 
on I believe the most imperial sits in the world, stand 
the citadel and city of Quebec : the shipping was lying 
in great quantity close under the rocky steep, and was 
dotted for a considerable way along the shining river ; 
in front was the island of Orleans, well-shaped and 
full-peopled ; ridge upon ridge beyond, ending with 
Cape Tourment, descended on the river ; the shore on 
either side gleamed with white villages, and the town 
below seemed to climb or almost leap up the straight 
precipice, broken with high convent roofs and glittering 
tinned spires. The flag of England waved upon the 
highest bastion that crowned the rock, the band of the 
Queen's Guards was playing in the garden, the clearest 
blue of western skies was above my head, and, rising 
above the whole glowing scene, was the commemorative 
pillar to that General Wolfe, who on this spot transferred 
to us EngUshmen, by his own victory and death, and 
with the loss of forty-five men, the mastery of a continent. 



70 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

The only other scene I will attempt to sketch shall 
be in the centre of Lake Huron, on one of its countless 
islands. I am justified in using that epithet, since not 
long ago our Government ordered a survey to be made 
of the islands ; they counted 40,000, and then gave it 
up ; and some of these were of no contemptible size, 
one of them being ninety miles long. I was one of a 
party which at that time went annually up the lake to 
attend an encampment of many thousand Indians, and 
make a distribution of presents among them. About 
sunset our flotilla of seven canoes, manned well by In- 
dian and French Canadian crews drew up ; some of 
the rowers cheering the end of the day's work Avith 
snatches of a Canadian boat-song. We disembarked 
on some rocky islet which, as probably as not, had 
never felt the foot of man before ; in a few moments 
the utter solitude had become a scene of bustle and 
business, carried on by the sudden population of some 
sixty souls ; tents had been pitched in which we were 
to sleep ; small trees had been cut for fuel ; fires had 
been lighted round which the motley crews were pre- 
paring the evening meal ; some were bathing in the 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA, 11 

transparent little bays, some standing on a jutting 
piece of cliff, fishing ; and here and there an Indian 
in the water, motionless, watching with an intent gaze, 
a spear in his hand ready to dart on his prey be- 
neath. A large oil-cloth had been spread for our party 
on a convenient ledge of rock ; hot pea soup, hot fish, 
the chase of the day, and large cold rounds of beef, 
showed that, though we were in the desert, we did 
not fare like anchorites ; and the summer moon rose 
on the scattered fires, and the gay bivouac, and the 
snatches of song and chorus that from time to time 
woke the unaccustomed echoes of Lake Huron. 

Entering the United States again, I made a rapid 
journey, by Lakes Champlain and George, by Ticon- 
deroga and Saratoga, historic names ; spent four very 
delightful days in most attractive society in a New 
England village, revived the beauteous impressions 
of the Hudson, and, taking leave of friends not soon 
to be forgotten, on the quay of New- York, left the 
hospitable shore. 

You will have perceived, that in these desultory 
notes I have not attempted to pronounce any formal 



72 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

judgment upon the American people, or the great ex- 
periment they are conducting in the face of the world. 
The extreme diversity of habits, manners, opinions, 
feelings, race, and origin, in the several parts of the 
wide extent of country I traversed, would render the 
difficulty, great in any case, of such an undertaking, 
still more subtle and complicated. The striking con- 
trasts in such a shifting and variegated aspect of soci- 
ety, make me feel that any such general and dashing 
summary could only be attempted after the fashion of 
a passage which I have always much admired in Gib- 
bon, where, wishing to give a fau- view of the poetical 
character of Claudian, he sums up separately his mer- 
its and defects, and leaves his reader to strike the just 
balance. In some such mode it might be stated that 
North America, viewed at fii'st with respect to her nat- 
ural siu'face, exhibits a series of scenery, various, rich, 
and, in some of its features, unparalleled ; though she 
cannot, on the whole, equal Europe in her moimtain 
elevations, how infinitely does she surpass her in rivers, 
estuaries, and lakes. This variegated surface of earth 
and water is seen under a sky warm, soft, and balmy 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 73 

in some — clear, blue, and brilliant in all its latitudes, 
with a transparency of atmosphere which Italy does 
not reach, with varieties of forest growth and foliage 
unknown to Europe, and with a splendor of hues in 
autumn before Avhich painting must despair. With 
respect to the moral aspect, I naturally feel the diffi- 
culty of any succinct or comprehensine summary in- 
finitely heightened. The feature which is the most 
obvious, and probably the most enviable, is the nearly 
entire absence, certainly of the appearance, and, in a 
great degree, of the reality of poverty ; in no part of 
the world, I imagine, is there so much general ease 
and comfort among the great bulk of the people, and 
a gushing abundance struck me as the prominent cha- 
racteristic of the land. It is not easy to describe how 
far this consideration goes to brighten the face of na- 
ture, and give room for its undisturbed enjoyment. 
Within a mere span of time, as compared with the 
general growth and progress of nations, the industry, 
at once steady and persevering, of the inhabitants, has 
cleared enormous tracts of forest, reared, among their 
untrodden glades, spacious and stately cities, opened 
4 



74 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

ne^v highways through the swamp and the desert, cov- 
ered their unequalled rivers AYith fleets of steamboats 
and craft of every form, given an extension to canals 
beyond all previous experience, and filled land and 
water with hardy miracles of successful enterprise. 
The traveller, wafted with marvellous ease by steam- 
boats and railways over prodigious spaces, cannot but 
indulge in what may appear a mere superficial satisfac- 
tion at the accommodation he meets with in the hotels 
of the principal cities, which are regulated on a scale, 
and with a splendor and even cleanliness which he will 
find scarcely rivalled in the capitals of Europe. How- 
ever absorbed in the pursuits of business, agriculture, 
and trade, the citizens of these young republics may 
be, and though it would seem to be their obvious voca- 
tion in life to cultivate almost boundless wastes, and 
connect almost interminable distances, circles are nev- 
ertheless to be found among them, which in point of 
refined and agreeable intercourse, of literary taste, and 
general accomplishment, it would be difficult for the 
same capitals of the elder world to surpass ; the Bench 
and Bar, as well as other professions, can boast both of 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 76 

the solid and brilliant qualities by which they are 
adorned ; and while much occurs in Conofress that 
must be deemed rough and unseemly, the chords of 
high and generous feeling are frequently struck within 
its walls to accents of noble eloquence ; in the univer- 
sal fluency of their public speaking they undoubtedly 
surpass ourselves. In rural life I doubt whether the 
world can produce more examples of quiet simphcity 
and prosperous content than would be found, I might 
say most prominently, in the embowered villages of 
New England, or the sunny valleys of Pennsylvania. 
I am sure that I am not wanting in respect for the 
operative classes of this district, but I cannot conceal 
from myself that the appearance of the female factory 
population of Lowell presents some points of favorable 
contrast. Among the more opulent portion of society, 
an idle man without regular profession or fixed pur- 
suit is the exception Avhich excites observation and 
surprise. The purity of the female character stands 
deservedly high, and society has been deemed by some 
to be rendered less agreeable by the rigid devotion of 
the young married women to their households and 



^6 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

nurseries. It is something to have travelled nearly 
over the whole extent of the Union, Avithout having 
encountered a single specimen either of servility or in- 
civility of manner ; by the last I intend to denote 
intentional rudeness. Elections may seem the univer- 
sal business, topic, and passion of life, but they are, at 
least with but few exceptions, carried on without any 
approach to tumult, rudeness, or disorder ; those which 
I happened to see were the most sedate, unimpassioned 
processes I can imagine. In the Free States, at least, 
the people at large bear an active, and I believe, on 
the whole, a useful part in all the concerns of internal 
government and practical daily life ; men of all classes, 
and especially of the more wealthy and instructed, 
take a zealous share in almost every pursuit of useful- 
ness and philanthropy ; they visit the hospitals and 
asylums, they attend the daily instructions of the 
schools, they give lectures at lyceums and institutes. 
I am glad to think that I may be treading in their foot- 
steps on this occasion. I have already mentioned with 
just praise the universal diffusion and excellent quality 
of popular education, as established especially in the 



TRAVKLS IN AMEKIC'A. 'Jl 

States of New England, the powerful Empire State of 
New-York, and, I may add, the prosperous and as- 
piring State of Ohio. Without venturing to weigh 
the preponderating recommendations or deficiencies of 
the Voluntary System, I may fairly ask, what other 
communities are so amply supplied with the facilities 
of public worship for all their members ? The towns, 
old and young, bristle with churches ; they are almost 
always well filled; the Sabbath, in the Eastern and 
Northern States at least, is scrupulously observed, and 
with the most unbounded freedom of conscience, and 
a nearly complete absence of polemical strife and bit- 
terness, there is apparently a close unity of feeling 
and practice in rendering homage to God. 

Though it would appear difficult, and must certainly 
be ungracious, to paint the reverse side of such a 
country and such a people, a severe observer would 
not be long at fault. With respect to their scenery 
itself, while he could not deny that Avithin its vast ex- 
panse it contained at times both sublimity and beauty, 
he might establish against it a charge of monotony, to 
which the immense continuities of the same surfaces. 



78 TRAVKLS IN AMKKICA. 

whether of hill, valley, wood, lake, or river — the 
straight unbroken skirt of forest, the entire absence of 
single trees, the square parallelograms of the cleared 
spaces, the uniform line of zig-zag fences, the staring 
squareness of the new wooden houses, all powerfully 
contribute. In regard to climate, without dwelling on 
such partial influences as the malaria which desolates 
the stunted pine-barrens of North Carolina, and ban- 
ishes every white native of South Carolina from their 
rice-plains during the entire summer, the hot damps 
which festoon the trees on the southern coast Avith a 
funeral drapeiy of gray moss, the yellow fever which 
decimates the quays of New Orleans, and the feverish 
agues which line the banks of the Mississippi, it would 
be impossible to deny the violent alternations of tem- 
perature which have a more general prevalence, and it 
is certain that much fewer robust forms and ruddy 
complexions are to be seen than in our own more even 
latitudes. Passing from the physical to the moral at- 
mosphere, amidst all the vaunted equality of the 
American freemen, there seemed to be a more implicit 
deference to custom, a more passive submission to what 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 79 

is assumed to be the public opinion of the day or hour, 
than would be paralleled in many aristocratic or even 
despotic communities. This quiet acquiescence in the 
prevailing tone, this complete abnegation of individual 
sentiment, is naturally most perceptible in the domain 
of politics, but I thought that it also in no inconsider- 
able degree pervaded the social circle, biassed the de- 
cisions of the judicial bench, and even infected the 
solemn teachings of the pulpit. To this source may 
probably in some measure be traced the remarkable 
similarity in the manners, deportment, conversation, 
and tone of feeling, which has so generally struck 
travellers from abroad in American society. Who that 
has seen, can ever forget the slow and melancholy si- 
lence of the couples who walk arm-in-arm to the ta- 
bles of the great hotels, or of the unsocial groups who 
gather round the greasy meals of the steamboats, lap 
up the five minutes' meal, come like shadows, so de- 
part ? One of their able public men made an obser- 
vation to me, which struck me as pungent, and per- 
haps true, that it was probably the country in which 
there was less misery and less happiness than in any 



80 TRAVKLS IN AMEKiC'A. 

other of the Avorld. There are other points of man- 
ners on which I am not inclined to dilate, but to which 
it would at least require time to be reconciled. I may 
just intimate that their native plant of tobacco lies at 
the root of much that we might think objectionable. 
However necessary and laudable the general devotion 
to habits of industry and the practical business of life 
may be, and though there are families and circles in 
which no grace, no charm, no accomphshment, are 
wanting, yet it cannot be denied, that among the na- 
tion at large, the empire of dollars, cents, and mate- 
rial interests, holds a very preponderating sway, and 
that art and all its train of humanities exercise at pre- 
sent but an enfeebled and restricted influence. If we 
ascend from social to political life, and from manners 
to institutions, we should find that the endless cycles of 
electioneering preparations and contests, although they 
may be carried on for the most part without the riot- 
ous turbulence, or overt bribery, by which they are 
sometimes but too notoriously disgraced among our- 
selves, still leave no intermission for repose in the pub- 
lic mind ; enter into all the relations of existence ; sub- 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 81 

ordinate to themselves every other question of internal 
and foreign policy ; lead their public men, I will not 
say their best, but the average of them, to pander to 
the worst prejudices, the meanest tastes, the most ma- 
lignant resentments of the people ; at each change of 
administration incite the new rulers to carry the spirit 
of proscription into every department of the public ser- 
vice, fi-om the Minister at a great foreign court, to the 
postmaster of some half-barbarous outpost, — thus 
tending to render those Avhose functions ought to with- 
draw them the most completely from party influences 
the most unscrupulous partisans; and would make 
large masses welcome war and even acqviiesce in ruin, 
if it appeared that they could thus counteract the an- 
tagonist tactics, humihate the rival leader, or remotely 
influence the election of the next President. It is al- 
ready painfully felt, that as far as the universal choice 
of the people was relied on to secure for the highest 
office of the state the most commanding ability or the 
most signal merit, it may be pronounced to have failed. 
There may be less habitual and actual noise in Con- 
gress than in our own Parliament, but the time of the 

A* 



82 • TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

House of Representatives, not without cost to the con- 
stituent body which pays for their services, is contin- 
uously taken up, when not engrossed by a speech of 
some days' duration, with wrangles upon points of or- 
der and angry recrimination ; the language used in de- 
bate has occasionally sounded the loAvest depths of 
coarse and virulent acrimony, and the floor of the 
Legislative Hall has actually been the scene of violent 
personal rencounter. The manners of the barely civi- 
lized West, where it has been known that counsel 
challenge judges on the bench, and Members of the 
Legislature fire ofi" rifles at the Speaker as he sits in 
the chair, would appear to be gradually invading 
the very inner shrine of the Constitution. Having 
done justice to the strictness and purity of morals 
which distinguish many of the more settled portions 
of the continent, it cannot be concealed that the reck- 
less notions and habits of the vagrant pioneers of the 
West, evinced as these are by the practices of gam- 
bling, drinking, and licentiousness, by an habitual disre- 
gard of the Sabbath, and by more constant swearing 
than I ever heard any where else, fearfully disfigure 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 83 

that great valley of the Mississippi, destined inevitably, 
at no distant day, to be the preponderating section of 
the entire Union. It is at this day impossible to go 
into any society, especially of the older and more 
thoughtful. men, some of whom may themselves have 
borne an eminent part in the earlier struggles and ser- 
vice of the commonwealth, without hearing the dege- 
neracy of modern times, and the downward tendency 
of all things, despondingly insisted upon. At the pe- 
riod of my visit, besides the numerous instances of indi- 
vidual bankruptcy and insolvency, not, alas ! peculiar 
to the New World, the doctrine of repudiation, offi- 
cially promulgated by sovereign States, had given an 
unpleasing confirmation to what is perhaps the pre- 
vailing tendency among retired politicians. I have re- 
served for the last topic of animadversion the crowning 
evil — the capital danger — the mortal plague-spot — 
Slavery. I have not disclaimed the original responsi- 
bility of my own country in introducing and riveting it 
upon her dependencies ; I do not disguise the porten- 
tous difficulties in the way of adequate remedy to the 
great and growing disease. But what I cannot shut 



84 TRAVELS IN AMERICA. 

my eyes on is, that while it lasts, it must still continue, 
in addition to the actual amount of suffering and 
wrong which it entails on the enslaved, to operate 
with terrible re-action on the dominant class, to blunt 
the moral sense, to sap domestic virtue, to degrade in- 
dependent industry, to check the onward march of en- 
terprise, to sow the seeds of suspicion, alarm, and ven- 
geance in both internal and external intercourse, lo 
distract the national councils, to threaten the perma- 
nence of the Union, and to leave a brand, a bye-Avord, 
and a jest upon the name of Freedom. 

Having thus endeavored, without consciousness of 
any thing mis-stated or exaggerated, though of much 
that is wanting and incomplete on either side, to sum 
up the good and the bad, I leave my hearers to draw 
their own conclusions from the whole ; there are large 
materials both for approval and attack, ample ground.s 
both for hope and fear. Causes are occasionally at 
work which almost appear to portend a disruption of 
the Federal Union ; at the same time a strong senti- 
ment of pride about it, arising partly from an honest 
patriotism, partly from a feeling of complacency in its 



TRAVELS IN AMERICA, 85 

very size and extent, may tend indefinitely to postpone 
any such pregnant result ; but whatever may be the 
solution of that question, whatever the issue of the 
future destinies assigned to the great American Repub- 
lic, it is impossible to have contemplated her extent, 
her resources, the race that has mainly peopled her, 
the institutions she has derived or originated, the liber- 
ty which has been their life-blood, the industiy which 
has been their offspring, and the free Gospel which 
has been published on her wide plains and wafted by 
her thousand streams, without nourishing the belief, 
and the hope, that it is reserved for her to do mucli, in 
the coming generations, for the good of man and the 
glory of God. 



THE POETRY OF POPE. 



I HAVE undertaken to read a paper on "The Poetry 
of Pope." My hearers, however, will be sorely disap- 
pointed, and my own purpose will have been singularly 
misconstrued, if any expectation should exist that I am 
about to bring any fresh matter or information to the 
subject with which I am about to deal. Such means 
of illustration, I trust, may be amply supplied by Mr, 
Croker, who has announced a new edition of Pope, — a 
task for which both his ability and his long habits of 
research appear well to qualify him. As little is it 
within either my purpose or my power to present you 
with any novelty of view, or originality of theory, either 
upon poetry in general, or the poetry of Pope in par- 



88 THE POETRV OF POPE. 

ticular. The task tiiat I have ventured, perhaps rashlj^ 
to impose upon myself, lias a much more simple, and, 
I am willing to hope, less personal aim. 

It is briefly this. It has seemed to me for a very 
long time, I should say from about the period of my 
own eai'ly youth, that tlie character and reputation of 
Pope, as a poet, had sunk, in general contemporary es- 
timation, considerably below their jirevious, and their 
proper level. I felt ruffled at this, as an injustice to an 
author whom my childhood had been taught to admii-e 
and whom the verdict of my maturer reason approved. 
1 lamented this, because I thought that the extent of 
this depreciation on the one side, and of the preferences 
which it necessarily produced on the other, must have 
a tendency to mislead the public taste, and to misdirect 
the powers of our rising minstrels. 

I allow myself the satisfaction of thinking that there 
arc alread}^ manifest some symptoms of that re-action, 
which, whenever real merit or essential trutli is con- 
cerned, will always ensue upon unrnerited depression. 
1 remember, too, tliat it gave me quite a refreshing- 
sensation to find, during my travels in the United States 



THE POETRY OF POPE. 89 

of America, that among some of the most literary and 
cultivated portions of that great community (although 
I would not more implicitly trust to young America 
than I would to Young England on this point), the 
reverence for Pope still partook largely of the sounder 
original faith of the parent land. I fear, however, that 
there is still enough of heresy extant among us, to 
justify one, who considers himself a true worshipper, 
who almost bows to the claim of this form of Popish 
infallibility, in making such eft'orts as may be within his 
power to win back any doubtful or hesitating votary to 
the ;ibandoned shrine. 

The attitude, then, in which 1 appear before you on 
the present occasion, is this. I look on myself as a 
counsel, self- constituted it is true, but for whose sin- 
cerity the absence of any fee may be considered as a 
sufficient guarantee ; and here, then, in the short space 
which can be allowed by this Court for the business of 
the defence, I consider myself bound to put before you 
such pleas as I may think best calculated to get a ver- 
dict from you on my side of the case. 

The best plan, which, as it appears to me, I can 



90 THE POETKV OF POPE. 

adopt for disarming any reasonable suspicion on the 
part of my jurors (all, I feel sure, candid and enlight- 
ened men), as well as for doing justice to my own 
character as a critic, is to state frankly what I do not 
claim for my client, the late Alexander Pope. 1 do 
not, then, pretend to place him on the very highest 
pedestal of poetry, among the few foremost of the 
tuneful monarch s and lawgivers of mankind. Confining 
ourselves to our own country, I do not of course, ask 
you to put him on a level with the universal, undispu- 
ted, unassailable supremacy of Shakspeare — nor with 
Milton, of whom Mr. Macaulay, whom this town once 
honored itself by making its representative, has lately 
thus beautifully spoken : — 

" A mightier spirit, unsubdued by pain, danger, 
poverty, obloquy, and blindness, meditated, undisturbed 
by the obscene tumult which raged all around, a song 
so subhme and so holy, that it could not have misbe- 
come the lips of those ethereal beings whom he saw, 
with that inner eye which no calamity could darken, 
flinging down on the jasper pavement their crowns of 
^o^aranth and gold." 



THE POETKV OF POPE. 91 

I fancy that some might wish to make a further re- 
serve for the gentle fancy of Spenser, though the ob- 
solete character of much of his phraseology, and the 
tediousness insepai-able from all forms of sustained 
allegory, must, I apprehend, in these days, very con- 
siderably contract the number of his readers. Nay, I 
can quite allow for the preference being given to Pope's 
more immediate predecessor, Dryden, whose composi- 
tions, though assuredly less finished and complete, un- 
doubtedly exhibit a more nervous vein of argumenta- 
tive power, and a greater variety of musical rhythm. 
When I have mentioned these august names, I have 
mentioned all, writing in the English tongue, who, in 
ray humble apprehension, can possibly be classed before 
Pope. 

I may observe, that in this estimate I appear to be 
confirmed by the present Commissioners of Fine Arts, 
who, in selecting the Poets from whose works subjects 
for six vacant spaces in the new Palace of Westminster 
were to be executed by living artists, named Chaucer 
(who by his antiquity as well as his merits was 
properly appointed to lead the Hne of English 



02 JIIE rOETUY OF 1'01'E. 

biirds), Shakspeare, Spenser, Milton, Dryden, and 
Pope. 

Though I conceive, and you Avill readily concur, that 
the case I am endeavoring to make good must be 
mainly established by my client's own precise words, — 
and the anticipated pleasure of quoting them to atten- 
tive ears has been, perhaps, my chief inducement to 
undertake the office which I am now fulfilling, — yet I 
consider it will not be out of place for the object I have 
in view, especially before an audience of a nation which 
much delights in, and is indeed much ruled by, pre- 
cedent, if I should quote a few approved authorities 
(had time permitted I might have availed myself of a 
great number), merely for the purpose of showing that 
if you should be pleased to side with me in this issue, 
we shall find ourselves in company of which we shall 
have no need to be asluimed. 

1 shall also thus furnish a proof of what I have 
stated above, that I am not straining after originality 
or novelty of remark ; indeed, I feel that I shall make 
way in proportion as the testimony I adduce proceeds 
from lips more trustworthy than my own, 



THE POETRV OF POPE. 93 

What says Savage, a poet himself of irregular, but 
no mean genius ? He thus speaks of Pope : — 



' Though gay as mirth, as curious thought sedate, 
As elegance polite, as power elate. 
Profound as reason, and as justice clear, 
Soft as persuasion, yet as truth severe, 
As bounty copious, as persuasion sweet, 
Like nature various, and like art complete ; 
So fine her morals, so sublime her views. 
His life is almost equalled by his muse." 



Part of this commendation, I must admit, appears 
even to me overstrained. Some of Pope's composi- 
tions are marred by occasional coarseness and indeli- 
cacy, and his mind and character, I fear it must be 
allowed, were at times disfigured by envy, resentment, 
and httleness Compared, however, with most of his 
predecessors of the reign of Charles II., and with 
many of his own contemporaries, both his muse and 
his life may have been deemed decent and severe. He 
seems himself, at all events, to have indulged in this 
estimate of the tenor of his own productions : — 



94 THE POETRV OF POPE. 

" Curst be the verse, how well soe'er it flow, 
That tends to make one honest man my foe, 
Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear, 
Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear." 

I return to my authorities. 

I do not quote Bishop Warburton, as he was the 
ayowed apologist, as well as executor and editor, of 
Pope. 

Dr. Joseph Warton, who wrote an essay on the genius 
and writings of Pope, chiefly with a view of proving 
what I have admitted above, that he ought not to be 
ranked in the highest class of our native poets, and 
who appears to wish, as I certainly do not, to have a 
hit at him whenever he can, concedes, however, thus 
much to him : — 

" In the species of poetry wherein Pope excelled, 
he is superior to all mankind, and I only say that this 
species of poetry is not the most excellent one of the 
art. He is the great poet of reason, the first of ethi- 
cal authors in verse." 

Dr. Johnson, in his Avell-known and most agreeable 
life of Pope, says thus : — 



THE POETRY OF POPE. 95 

" Of his intellectual character, the constituent and 
fundamental principle was good sense ;" and then, 
" Pope had likewise genius, a mind active, ambitious, 
and adventurous, always investigating, always aspiring, 
in its widest searches longing to go forward, in its 
highest flights still wishing to be higher." 

And at the close of the masterly contrast which he 
draws between Dryden and Pope, he thus sums it 
up:— 

" If the flights of Dryden are higher. Pope con- 
tinues longer on the wing ; if of Dryden's fire the 
blaze is brighter, of Pope is the heat more regular and 
constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and 
Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read Avith fre- 
quent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight." 

INIason, also a poet and very accomplished man, who 
had done so much in editing and illustrating the works 
of another most eminent and admirable master of his 
art (I refer to Gray), has shown what an exalted esti- 
mate he had formed of Pope, in the passage where 
he reproaches him for the undue praise wliich he had 



•• 



96 TIIS POKTKV OF POPE. 

lavished on tlie famous Hemy St. John, Lord Bohng- 
broke : — 

" Call we the shade of Pope from that blest bower, 
Where throned he sits with many a tuneful sage ; 
Ask, if he ne'er repents that luckless hour, 
When St. John's name illumined glory's page. 

Ask, if the wretch who dared his honor stain. 

Ask, if his country's, his religion's foe, 
Deserved the wreath that Marlboro' failed to gain, 

The deathless meed, he only/could bestow ?" 

George, Lord Lyttelton, another poet himself, calls 
him " The sweetest and most elegant of English poets, 
the severest chastizer of vice, and the most persuasive 
teacher of wisdom." 

How speaks Campbell, the author of the Pleasures 
of Hope, and the Battle of the Baltic ? If any one 
is entitled to speak of what true poetry is, that right 
will not be denied to Thomas Campbell. He calls 
Pope, "a genuine poet," and says with true discrimi- 
nation : — 

" The public ear was long fatigued witli repetitions 







THfc; roKTRV OF pori:. 9Y 

of his manner ; but if we place ourselves in the situa- 
tion of those to Avhom his brilliancy, succinctness, and 
animation were wholly new, we cannot wonder at their 
being captivated to the fondest admiration." 

I will only further cite from the poets whom many 
of us remember in our own day, one still more illus- 
trious name. The fervid, wayward, irregular muse of 
Lord Byron, presented the strongest points of contrast 
with the measured, even, highly-trained, smoothly- 
polished, temperament of Pope. What did Lord 
Byron think of Pope ? He terms him, " The most 
perfect and harmonious of poets — he, who, having no 
fault, has had reason made his reproach. It is this 
very harmony which has raised the vulgar and atro- 
cious cant against him — (Lord Byron was fond of 
using strong language) : — because his versification is 
perfect, it is assumed that it is his only perfection ; be- 
cause his truths are so clear, it is asserted that he has 
no invention ; and because he is always intelligible, it 
is taken for granted that he has no genius. I have 
loved and honored the fame and name of that illustri- 
ous and unrivalled man, far more than my own paltry 
5 



98 THE POETRY OF I'OPK. 

renown, and the trashy jingle of tliat crowd of schools 
and upstarts Avho pretend to rival or even surpass him. 
Sooner than a single leaf should be torn from his laurel, 
it were better that all which these men, and that I, as 
one of their set, have ever written, should line trunks," 

There is another and more general testimony to the 
reputation, at least, if not to the actual merits of Popf , 
which may be here mentioned ; this is, the extent to 
which his lines are quoted as familiar maxims and illus- 
trations of the daily incidents of life, and the common 
meanings of men, — quoted often probably by persons 
who have little knowledge or recollection where the 
words are to be found. I am inclined to believe that, 
in this respect, and it is one not to be considered 
slightingly, he would be found to occupy the second 
place, next, of course, to the universal Shakspeare 
himself. Allow me to cite a few instances. 

When there has been a pleasant party of people, 
either in a convivial or intellectual view — I wish we 
might think it of our meeting this evening — we say 
that it has been 

'•The foa?t of ronson, nml tlio now of soul.*' 



TltE PORTRV OF I'OPEi 99 

How often are we warned — 1 have sometimes even 
heard tlie warning addressed to Mechanics' Institutes, 
—that 

" A little learning is a ilungeron^ tiling.'' 

llow often reminded, 

" An honest man's the noblest work of fJod," 

Or, witli neai'ly the same meaning, 

" Who tanglit the useful science, to be good." 

There is a couplet which I ought to carry in my own 
recollection — 

" What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or Cowards ? 
Alas ! not all the blood of all the Howards." 

It is an apt illustration of the offices of hospitality, 

" Welcome the coming, speed the going guest.'* 

How familiar is the instruction, 

" To look, through Nature, up to Nature's God»" 



100 THK POE'ri;V OF rovK. 

As rules with refercnco to composition, 

"Tlie last and greatest art— the art to blot." 
"To snatch a grace beyond tbc reach of art ;" 

And then as to tlie best mode of conveying the instrnc- 
tion, 

" Men irinst be laiiglit as if jou taiiglil them not." 

Thei-e is the celebrated definition of Avit : 

" True wit is nature to advantage dressed ; 
What oft was thought, bnt ne'er so well expressed." 

Do you Avanl to illustrate the importance of early edu- 
cation ? You observe, 

"Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined." 

Do you wish to characterize ambition somewhat favor- 
ably ? You call it, 

" The glorious fault of angels and of gods." 

Or Describing a great conqueror, 

" A mighty hunter, and his prey was man." 



THE POETKY OF POPE. 101 

Do you seek the safest rule for architecture or garden- 
Ing? 

'* Consult the genius of the place in all ;" 

Or, with exquisite good sense, 

" 'Tis use alone that sanctifies expense, 
And splendor borrows all her rays from sense." 

Are you tempted to say any thing rather severe to 
your wife or daughter, when she insists on a party of 
pleasure, or an expensive dress ? You tell her, 

"That every woman is at heart a rake." 

And then, if you wish to excuse your own submission, 
you plead — 

" If to her share some female errore fall, 
Look on her face and you'll forget them all." 

How often are we inclined to echo the truth — 

"That fools rush in where angels fear to tread," 

And this too, — 

"That gentle dulness olteii loves a joke.'' 



102 THK I'OETKY OF POPE. 

Who has not felt this to be true ? 

" Hope springs eternal in tlie human breast ; 
, Man never is, but always to be blest." 

When an orator, or a Parliamentary candidate — in 
Avhich last capacity I have often appeared before some 
of you — wishes to rail at absolute governments, he 
talks of 

" The nionsti'oiis faith of many made for one." 

Then there are two maxims, one in politics and one in 
religion, which have both been extensively found fault 
with, but the veiy amount of censure proves what 
alone I am now attempting to establish, not the truth 
or justice of Pope's words, but their great vogue and 
currency : — 

" For forms of government let fools contest ; 
VVhate'er is best administered is best: 
Fur modes of faith let graceless zealots fight ; 
His can't be wrong whose life is in tlic right." 

It is now time to judge Pope from his own works, 



THE POETRY OF POPE. 103 

by which, of course, his place in the estimate of posteri- 
ty must finally stand. 

I shall pass hurriedly by his earlier compositions. 
He tells us himself of the precocity of his genius : 

" I lisped in' numbers, for the uumbers came." 

But his very youthful productions, on the whole, appear 
to be more remarkable for their dates than their intrin- 
sic merits. He wrote his Pastorals at sixteen. Inde- 
pendently of the age at which they were written, they 
appear to me trivial, forced, out of keeping with the 
English soil and life to which they are by way of being 
assigned. One piece of praise is justly their due ; after 
the publication of these verses by a youth, we may call 
him a boy, of sixteen, I do not see why a rugged or 
inharmonious English verse need ever again have been 
written ; and what is more, I believe very few such 
have been written. Mr. Macaulay says on this point, 
" Fi'om the time when the Pastorals appeared, heroic 
versification became matter of rule and compass, and, 
before long, all artists were on a level." It was surely 
better that this level should be one upon which the 



104 THE POETRY OF POPE. 

reader could travel siiioothly along, without jolts or 
stumbles. 

In the short poem of the Messiah, 1 do justice to the 
stately flow of verse upon the highest of human themes. 
Both Dr. Johnson and Dr. Warton give it a decided 
preference over the Pollio of Virgil, which is concerned 
with topics of close and wonderful similarity. I do not 
know how far they are right, but I feel quite sure that 
both the Pollio of Virgil and the Messiah of Pope fall 
immeasurably below the prose translation of Isaiah in 
our Bibles. 

Windsor Forest appears to be on the whole a cold 
production. It contains some good lines on the poet 
Earl of Surrey™ 

" Matchless his pen, victorious was his lance, 
Bold in the lists, and graceful in the dance" — 

an extremely pretty account of the flight and plumage 
of a pheasant, a very poetical list of the tributaries of 
the Thames, and some well-sounding verses on the 
Peace of Utrecht, then recently concluded, from which 
in the early part of this year I was induced to quote 



THE POETKV OF POPE. 106 

some lines which I thought very apposite to the pro- 
posed Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations, at 
London, in 1851 : — 

" The time shall come, when, free as sesis or wind, 

Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind, 

9 
Whole nations enter with each swelling tide. 

And seas but join the regions they divide ; 

Earth's distant ends our glories shall behold, 

And the new world launch forth to meet the old." 

The Odes written by Pope are decidedly of an infe- 
rior caste. I need not say how inferior to the immor- 
tal Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, by Dryden, who preceded 
— or how inferior to Gray or Campbell, who have fol- 
lowed him. The Ode, perhaps, of every species of 
poetical composition, was the most alien to the genius 
of Pope ; its character is rapt, vehement, abrupt ; his 
is composed, polished, methodical ; his haunt would 
not be the mountain top, or the foaming cataract, but 
the smooth parterre and the gilded saloon. You may 
prefer one bent of mind, as you would one form of 
scenery ; the question with which I now invite you to 
deal is, not in what style Pope wrote, but in the style 
5* 



106 THE rOETRV OF rOTE. 

Avhich he chose, and for which his nature best fitted 
him, how far he excelled. 

Among the very youthful productions of Pope, there 
were also some adaptations from Chaucer, Ovid, and 
one or two more ancient authors ; in point of execution 
they are only aistinguished by their smooth versifica- 
tion, and the matter of them ought to have forbidden 
the attempt. 

In speaking as I have done of many of Pope's earlier 
compositions, however I may assume myself to be a 
devoted admirer — partisan if you should so please to 
term it — I conceive that I have at least shown that 
hitherto I am no indiscriminate praiser, who thinks tliat 
every thing which proceeds from his favorite must be 
perfect. On the contrary, though his facility in writing 
verses was almost precocious, the complete mastery of 
his art seems to have been gradually and laboriously 
developed. " So regular my rage," was the descrip- 
tion which he has himself applied to his own poetry. 
It was not so much " the pomp and prodigality of 
heaven," which have been allotted to a few ; it was 
rather, in the edifice of song which he has reared, that 



THE POETRY OF POPE. lOV 

nicety of detail, and tliat completeness of finish, where 
every stroke of the hammer tells, and every nail holds 
its exact place. 

His early friend and admirer, Walsh, seems accu- 
rately to have discerned the path of excellence which 
was open for him, when he told him that there was 
one way in which he might excel any of his predeces- 
sors, Avhich was by correctness, for though we had be- 
fore him several great poets, we could boast of none 
that were perfectly correct. Pope justified the advice, 
and if correctness is not the highest praise to which a 
poet can aspire, it is no mean distinction to show how 
an author can be almost faultlessly correct, and almost 
as invariably the reverse of all that is tame, mean, or 
flat. 

There come, however, among compositions which in 
any one else would most strictly be called early, a few 
which will not bear to be dismissed with sucb a hasty 
or superficial notice. The Essay on Criticism was 
written when he was twenty or twenty-one years old, 
and as svich it appears a positive marvel. But he had 
now entered a field on which he was quite a master — 



108 THE POETRY OF POPE. 

the domain of good sense and of good taste, applied 
to the current literature of a scholar, and the common 
topics of life. 

Very soon after, however, as if to show that if he had 
willed it, he could have exercised as full a mastery over 
the region of light fancy and sportive imagery, as of 
sober reflection and practical wisdom, he wrote what 
is termed a heroi- comic poem, the Rape of the Lock. 
Dr. Johnson calls this the most exquisite example of 
ludicrous poetry, though I do not think the word ludi- 
crous a happy epithet of the Doctor's ; Dr. Warton 
calls it the best satire extant ; and we are told that 
Pope himself considered the intermixture of the ma- 
chinery of the sylphs with the action of the story, as 
the most successful exertion of his art. As my busi- 
ness to-night is more with Pope on the whole as a poet, 
than with the details and the conduct of his single 
poems, I must not suffer myself to linger on the details 
of this delicious work. It is so finished and nicely 
fitted together, that it would scarcely answer to sepa- 
rate any isolated passages from the context ; besides, 
exquisite as the entire poem is, yet, the subject being 



THE POETRY OF POPE. 109 

• professedly trivial, any single extract might appear de- 
ficient in importance and dignity. The whole is as 
sparkhng as the jewelled cross upon the bosom of the 
heroine, — 

'•On her while breast a sparkling cross she bore, 
Which Jews might kiss, and Infidels adore." 

^1 It is as stimulating as the pinch of snuflf he so com- 

pactly describes, 

" The pungent grains of titillating dust." 

But there was one other chord of the poetic lyre 
which Pope, still young in years, had yet to show his 
power to strike, and it is the most thrilling in the whole 
compass of song — the poetry of the passions and the 
heart. To this class I assign the Elegy to the Memory 
of an Unfortunate Lady, and the ever memorable 
Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard. A few words will 
suffice here for the Elegy ; its moral tendency cannot 
be defended, as it appears, incidentally at least, to ex- 
cuse and consecrate suicide. In its execution it com- 
bines in a high degree poetic diction v/ith pathetic 



110 THE POETRY OF I'Oi'E. 

feeling, I must pause longer on the Epistle from 
Eloisa to Abelard. I ought, however, before I give 
vent to the full glow of panegyric, to make two ad- 
missions ; one, that a sensitive delicacy would have 
avoided the subject ; the other, that the matter is not 
original, but is supplied in great degree by the actual 
letters of the distinguished and unfortunate pair who 
gave their name to the epistle. Where the adaptation, 
however, is so consummate, this makes a very slight 
deduction from the merit of the author. The poem is 
not long, but in point of execution it appears to me 
one of the most faultless of human compositions ; every 
thought is passion, and every line is music. The strug- 
gle between aspiring piety and forbidden love forms its 
basis, and the scenery and accessories of monastic life 
and the Roman Catholic ritual, furnish a background 
highly congenial, solemn, and picturesque. 

1 must endeavor to justify my panegyric by a few 
quotations. The commendation of letter-Avriting is 
well known. It seems to me still more applicable 
since the introduction of the penny stamp. 



THE rOETRY OF I'OPE. Ill 

" Heaven firsl taught letters for some wretch's aid, 
Some banish'd lover, or some captive maid ; 
They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires. 
Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires, 
The virgin's wish without her fears impart. 
Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart ; 
Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul, 
And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole." 

1 give the description of the Convent founded by 
Abelard : — 

" Vou raised these hallowed walls ; the dessert smiled, 
And Paradise was opened in the wild. 
No weeping orphan saw his father's stores 
Our shrines irradiate, or emblaze the floors ; 
No silver saints, by dying misers given, 
Here bribe the rage of ill-requited heaven; 
But such [ilain roofs as piety could raise. 
And only vocal with the Maker's praise." 

There is the same scene colored by Eloisu's own 
state of mind : — 

" But o'er the twilight groves and dusky caves, 
Long sounding aisles, and intermingled graves. 
Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws 
A death-like silence and a dread repose. 



'H^* 



112 THE POETRY OF POPE. 

Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene, 
Shades every flower, and darkens every green, 
Deepens the murmur of the falling floods, 
And breathes a browner horror o'er the woods." 

This is surely eminently poetical and expressive. 
She refers to the happier destiny of the nun who is 
entirely true to her vocation -.r— 

'' How happy is the blameless vestal's lot, 
The world forgetting, by the world forgot ! 
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind ! 
Each prayer accepted, and each wish resigned ; 
Labor and rest that equal periods keep, 
Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep; 
Desires composed, affections ever even, 
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to heaven." 

Let nie give the description of her first acquaintance 
with Abelard : — 

'■Thou know'st how guiltless first I met thy flame. 
When love approached me under friendship's name ; 
>[y fancy formed thee of angelic kind, 
Some emanation of th' All-beauteous mind. 
Those smiling eyes, attempering every ray. 
Shone sweetly lambent with celestial day. 
(JuillleFs I gaz'd ; heaven listened while you sung. 
And truths divine came mended Irom that tongue." 



r^P* 



THE POETRY OF POPE. 113 

In that beautiful line, the force of human passion 
seems to obtain the mastery over the concerns of an- 
other life ; but I will close my extracts from this poem 
with the wishes she forms for their last meeting, in 
which piety appears finally to predominate over pas- 



'' Thou, Abelaid ! the last sad office pay, 
And smooth my passage to the realms of day. 
See my lips tremble, and my eyeballs roll, 
Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul! 
Ah no — in sacred vestments may'st thou stand, 
The hallowed taper tremiling in thy hand. 

(You remark all the force in that word " trembling ;" 
in the next line, observe bow the w^ords " present " and 
" lifted " carry on the drama of the scene) : — 

Present the cross before my lifted eye, 
Teach mc at once, and leani of me to die ; 
Ah then, thy once-loved Eloisa see, 
It will be then no crime to gaze on me. 

(That is, I think, a highly impassioned and pathetic 
line ) 

See from my cheek the transient roses fly, 



114 TUB I'OETKY OF POPE. 

("Transient," in the literal meaning of the word, 
passing off.) 

See the last sparkle languish in my eye ! 
Till every motion, pulse, and breath be o'er ; 
And e'en my Abelard be loved no more. 
O death, all eloquent ! you only prove, 
What dust we dote on when 'tis man wo love." 

It would be a strange omission in an estimate of the 
poetical achievements of Pope, to make no mention of 
his translation of Homer, thouo-h the fact of its being 
a translation, and its length, would both rather put it 
beyond the limits of my present criticism. Dr. John- 
son calls his Iliad, and I am inclined to believe with no 
more than perfect truth, the noblest version of poetry 
which the world has ever seen. The main objection 
alleged against it is, that being a professed translation 
of Homer, it is not Homeric — that it is full of grace 
and sparkle, but misses the unmatched simplicity and 
majesty of that great father of verse, — that, if I may 
so express myself, it has not the twang of Homer. 
All this, I think, must be admitted ; by some the 
poems of Sir Walter Scott, and old ballads like Chevy 



TUB POETRY OF roi'E. 115 

Chase, have been thought to convey a better notion of 
this Homeric twang than can be gathered from all the 
polished couplets of Pope. Cowper (an honored 
name) tried a more literal version in blank verse, which 
certainly may be said to represent more closely at least 
the simpUcity of the original. Let us, however, come 
to the practical test — as Lord Byron has asked con- 
cerning these two translations, " Who can ever read 
Cowper, and who will ever lay down Pope, except for 
the original ? Asa child I first read Pope's Homer 
with a rapture which no subsequent work could ever 
afiford, and children are not the worst judges of their 
own language." It is no mean praise that it is the 
channel which has conveyed the knowledge of Homer 
to the general English public, — not to our scholars, of 
course. Though it is far less to the purpose how I 
felt about this as a child, than how Lord Byron felt, I 
too remember the days (I fear, mdeed, that the anec- 
dote will savor of egotism, but I must not mind the 
imputation of egotism, if it illustrates my author), when 
I used to learn Pope's Iliad by heart behind a screen, 
while I was supposed to be engaged on lessons of 



116 THE POETRY OF POPE. 

more direct usefulness ; and I fancy that I was under 
the strange hallucination at the time that I had got by 
heart the four first books. I do not mention this as a 
profitable example, but in order to show the degree in 
which this translation was calculated to gain the mas- 
tery over the youthful mind. 

All the poems of Pope, to which I have already re- 
ferred, belong to that period of life which, in all ordi- 
nary cases, would be c-illed youth. I believe that they 
must have have been nearly altogether completed be- 
fore he was thirty. Those which I may further have 
to quote from (in doing which I shall hardly think it 
necessary to observe so much separate order between 
the different poems as heretofore), were the fruits of 
his matured years and settled powers. They hence- 
forth fall under one class of composition, that which 
treats of men, their manners, and their morals ; they 
are comprised under the titles of satires and moral 
essays. He himself speaks of the bent which his 
genius now adopted, 

"That not in fancy's maze he wandered long, 
Cut stooped to truth, and moralized Ins song." 



IHE T'OKTRY OF POPR. 1 1 V 

Upon which I again feel happy to find myself in full 
acquiescence with Lord Byron, who says, " He should 
have written, rose to truth. In ray mind the highest 
of all poetry is ethical poetry, as the highest of all 
earthly subjects must be moral truth."' 

Lord Bolingbroke and Bishop Atterbury, certainlj^ 
no mean judges of intellectual merit, declared that the 
strength of Pope's genius lay eminently and peculiarly 
in satire. What shall I, then, single out as an illustra- 
tion of his satiric vein ? The character of Lord Hervey, 
under the name of Sporus, is cited by Lord Byron as 
a specimen of his rich fancy (generally, but most erro- 
neously, assumed to be the quality in which Pope was 
chiefly deficient), and with this specimen of fancy Lord 
Byron defied all his own contemporaries to compete. 
That it does manifest injustice at least to the abilities 
of Lord Hervey, will be acknowledged by all who have 
read his very entertaining memoirs lately published ; 
but moreover, able and brilliant as it is, it is too dis- 
agreeable to repeat. Let me quote, then, his famous 
'^cbaracter of Addison, who had given oflPence to him, 
whether with good reason or not it is no part of my 



118 TliE rOKTRY OF POPE. 

present purpose, nor would it be in my power, to de^ 
cide. Pope thought that Addison had treated him 
slightingly and superciliously, and I believe took spe- 
cially amiss the kind of notice he had bestowed upon 
the Rape of the Lock. He speaks of him under the 
name of Atticus ; you will remark the consummate 
skill with which he first does justice to his genius, and 
then detracts from its lustre. It is also a great proof 
of the cleverness of the satire, that, sincere as our re- 
spect is both for the genius and character of Addison, 
it is impossible to go through this piece of dissection 
without believing that it must have touched upon some 
points of real soreness. 



" Peace to all such ! bxit were there one whos« 
True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires ; 
Blest with each talent and each art to please, 
And born to write, converse, and live with ease: 
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, 
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne, 
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, 
And hale for arts that caus'd himself to rise ; 
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, 
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer ; 



THE POETRY OF POPE. Hi) 

Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, 
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike ; 
Alike reserv'd to blame or to commend, 
A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend ; 
Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers beaicg'd, 
And so obliging, that he ne'er obligM ; 
Like Cato, give his little Senate laws, 
And sit attentive to his own applause ; 
While wits and templars ev'ry sentence raise, 
And wonder with a foolish face of praise — 
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be V 
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he !" 

Then I will take the character of the able, versatile, 
and unprincipled Duke of Wharton : — 

" Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days, 
Whose ruling passion was the lust of praise : 
Born with whafe'er could win it from the wise, 
Women and fools must like him, or he dies ; 
Tho' wondering senates hung on all he spokC) 
The club must hail him master of the joke. 

[This couplet has been apphed to the celebrated Mr. 
Sheridan, and does not ill suit the author of the 
speeches on Warren Hastings' trial, and the School 
for Scandal.] 



120 TIIK J'OKTUV OF VnVK. 

Thus with eacli gift of nature ai'd of ail, 

And wanting nothing but an honest heart, 

Grown all to all, from no one vice exempt ; 

Aad most conteraptii>Ie, to sliun contempt ; 

Ilis jjasslon still, to covet general praise, 

His life, to forfeit it a thousand ways; 

A constant bounty which no friend has raado ; 

An angel tongue, which no man can persuade ; 

A fool, with more of wit than half mankind. 

Too rash for thought, for action too refined ; 

A tyrant to the wife his heart approve?, 

A rebel to the vei7 king he loves ; 

lie dies, sad outcast of each church and state, 

And, harder still ! flagitious, yet not great. 

Ask you why Wharton broke through every rule? 

'Twas all for fear the knaves should call liim fool." 

I liave given the characters of two men ; fairness 
demands that at least I should give you one of a wo- 
man. I take that of Chloe, which, unlike the two last, 
has not, that I am aware, been ascertained to belong 
to any actual person, but most of us will feel that we 
have known people, to whom some parts of it at least 
might fit : — 

" Yet Chloe sure was formed without a spot- 
Nature in her then err'd not, but forgot. 



THE POETRY OF POPE. 121 

' With ev'ry pleasing, ev'ry prudent part, 

' Say what does Chloe want ?' She wants a heart. 

She speaks, behaves, and acts just as she ought ; 

But never, never reached one generous thought. 

Virtue she finds too painful an endeavor, 

Content to dwell in decencies for ever. 

So very reasonable, so unmoved. 

As never yet to love, or to be loved. 

She, while her lover pants upon her breast, 

Can mai'k the figures on an Indian chest : 

And when she sees her friend in deep despair. 

Observes how much a chintz exceeds mohair. 

Forbid it heaven, a favor or a debt 

She e'er should cancel ! but she may forget. 

Safe is your secret still in Chloe's ear ; 

But none of Chloe's shall you ever hear. 

Of all her Dears she never slandered one. 

But cares not if a thousand are imdone. 

Would Chloe know if you're alive or dead ? 

H 

She bids her footman put it in her head. ^ 

Chloe is prudent !— Would you too be wise. 
Then never break your heart when Chloe dies." 

Having tlius attempted to do justice to Pope's 
powers of satire, I must not omit to mention what I 
consider to be another of his feUcities almost of an 
opposite character, though I have perceived with plea- 



^ 



122 THE POETRY OF TOPE. 

sure since I noted this topic, that I have been antici- 
pated in the same hne of remark by the late Mr. 
Hazlitt; I say with pleasure, because that ingenious 
person was one of the guides and favorites of a school 
the most opposed in theory and practice to that of 
Pope ; I allude to the extreme tact, skill, and dehcacy 
with which he conveys a compliment, and frequently 
embodies in one pregnant hne or couplet a complete 
panegyric of the character he wishes to distinguish. 
Let me instance this by a few examples. Sometimes 
the compliment appears merely to be thrown out al- 
most as it were by chance to illustrate his meaning. 
So of the Duke of Chandos, whom at another time 
he is supposed to have intended to ridicule under the 
character of Timon : — 

" Thus gracious Chandos is beloved at gigbt." 

Then of Lord Corabury : — ■ 

"Would ye be blest V despise low joys, low gain*, 
Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains." 

Of General Ogjetliorpe, the founder of Georgia : — 



THR POETRY OF POPE. 123 

" Cue driv'u by strong benevolence of soul, 
Shall fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to polo." 

These have reference to manly virtues ; sometimes 
there is the same oblique reference to female claims : — 

" Hence Beauty, waking all lier tints, supplies 
An angel's sweetness, or Bridgewater's eyes." 

At other times the eulogium is more direct. Take 
that fine application to Lord Cobham of the effect of 
man's ruling passion, developing itself in death, which 
he has been pursuing through a number of instances, 
the man of pleasure, the miser, the glutton, the cour- 
tier, the coquette, all, for the most part, under circum- 
stances derogatory to the pride of human natui'e, when 
he thus sums them up : — • 

" And you, brave Cobham, to the latest breath 
Shall feel your ruling passion strong in death ; 
Such, in these moments, as in all the past, 
' Oh, save my country. Heaven !' shall be your last." 

How beautiful is the couplet to Dr. Arbuthnot, his 
physician and friend : — 



124 THE POETKY OF POPE. 

"Friend of my life ! which did not you prolong. 
The world had wanted many an idle song." 

How ingenious that to the famous PhiHp Stanhope, 
Earl of Chesterfield, on being desired to write some 
lines in an album with his pencil : — 

" Accept a miracle instead of wit, 
See two dull lines by Stanhope's pencil writ." 

How happy is the allusion to Lord Peterborough, who 
made a brilliant campaign in Spain within a wonder- 
fully short time. He represents him as assisting to lay 
out his grounds : — 

" And he whose lightning pierced th' Iberian lines 
Now forms my quincunx, and now ranks my vines, 
Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain, 
Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain." 

He always speaks of Murray, the great Lord Mansfield, 
with pride and affection. It is true that one of the 
worst lines he ever wrote is about him, the second in 
this couplet : — 

" Graced as thou art with all the power of words. 
So known, so honored, at the House of Lords. " 



THE POETRY OF POPE. 126 

An instance how much deUcacy it requires to introduce 
with effect familiar names and things ; sometimes it 
tells with great force ; here it is disastrously prosaic ; 
we almost forgive it, however, when he turns from the 
Palace of Westminster to the Abbey opposite : — 

"Where Murray, long enough his country's pride. 
Shall h3 no more than Tully, or than Hyde." 

He again alludes to the aptitude for poetical composi- 
tion which Murray had exhibited, and also to the talent 
for epigram which he assumes that the great orator 
Pulteney would have displayed if he had not been en- 
grossed by pohtics. 

" How sweet an Ovid, Murray, was our boast ; 
How many Martials were in Pulteney lost." 

These were for the most part his political friends, 
but when he mentions Sir Robert Walpole, to whom 
his friends, more than himself, were virulently opposed, 
how respectful and tender is the reproach, how adroit 
and insinuating the praise :— 



126 THE POETRY OF POPE. 

" Seen him I have, but in his happier hour, 
Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power, — 
Seen him, uncumbered with a venal tribe, 
Smile without art, and win without a bribe." 

I might adduce many other instances ; I might quote 
at full length the noble epistle to Lord Oxford, but I 
will sum up this topic with that striking passage in 
which, while he enumerates the persons who encour- 
aged and fostered his earlier productions, he presents 
us with a gallery of illustrious portraits, sometimes 
conveys by a single word an insight into their whole 
character, and concludes the distinguished catalogue 
Avith the name of that St. John whom he uniformly 
regarded with feelings little short of idolatry, and 
which, however misplaced and ill-grounded, have even 
in themselves something of the poetical attribute : — 

" But why then publish ? Cranville the polite. 
And knowing Walsh would tell me I could write ; 
Well-natured Garth, inflamed with early praise, 
And Congreve loved, and Swift endured, my lays. 

(Observe how the gentle and amiable Congreve 



THE POETRY OF POPE. 127 

"loved," and the caustic and cynical Swift "en- 
dured.") 

The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield, read, 
E'en mitred Rochester would nod the head, 

(said to have been the ordinary symptom of Bishop 
Atterbury being pleased ; then comes the swelling 
climax,) 

And St. John's self, great Drytlen's friend before, 
With open arms received one Poet more. 
Happy the studies, when by these approved. 
Happier the author, when by these beloved." 

I feel that I ought not entirely to omit all mention of 
the long satiric poem of the Dunciad, upon which Pope 
evidently bestowed much care and labor ; but it is 
throughout disfigured by great ill-nature, and by a per- 
vading run of unpleasant and unsavory images. There 
is much spirit in the account of the young high-born 
Dunce, who makes, what is called, the Grand Tour : — 

" Europe he saw, and Europe saw him too ;" 

and tells how he 



128 THE POETRY OF POPE. 

"Judicious drank, and, greally daring, dined." 

There is a luscious kind of burlesque softness in 
these lines, 

" To happy convQnts, bosomed deep in vines. 
Where slumber abbots, purple as their wines ; 
To isles of fragrance, lily-silvered vales. 
Diffusing languor in the panting gales ; 
To lands of singing and of dancing slaves. 
Love-whispering woods, and lute resounding waves." 

One of the most distinguishing excellencies of Pope 
is the vividness which he imparts to all the pictures he 
presents to the mind, and which he attains by always 
making use of the very most appropriate terms which 
the matter admits. This, in conjunction with his won- 
derful power of compression, which he has probably 
carried further than any one before or since, gives a 
terseness and completeness to all he says, in which he 
is unrivalled. As instances of this perfect picture 
painting, I would refer you, as I must not indefinitely 
indulge in long citations, to the descriptions, all in the 
same Epistle on Riches, of the Miser's House, the 



THE POETRY OF POPE. 129 

Man of Ross's charities, and of the death of Villiers, 
Duke of Buckingham : — 

" In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung, 
The floors of plaister, and the walls of dung, 
On once a flock bed, but repaired with straw. 
With tape-tied curtains, never meant to draw, 
The George and Garter dangling from that bed 
Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red. 
Great Villiers lies — alas ! how changed from him. 
That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim !" 

If any should object that this is all very finished and 
elaborate, but it is very minute — only miniature paint- 
ing after all, what do you say to this one couplet on 
the operations of the Deity ? 

** Builds life on death, on change duratfcn founds. 
And gives the eternal wheels to know Iheir rounds." 

I would beg any of the detractors of Pope to furnish 
me with another couple of lines from any author what- 
ever, which inclose so much sublimity of meaning 
within such compressed limits, and such precise terms. 
I must cite another passage, in which he ventures on 
the same exalted theme, with somewhat more enlarge- 



130 THE POETRY OF POPE. 

ment ; it would be impossible, however, for you to hear 
it, and bring against it any charge of diffuseness : — 

" All are but parts of one stupendous whole. 
Whose body nature is, and God the soul ; 
That, changed through all, and yet in all the same, 
Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame ; 
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze. 
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees. 
Lives through all life, extends through all extent. 
Spreads undivided, operates unspent. 

(There is a couplet indeed.) 

Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part. 
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart ; 
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns. 
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns ; 
To Him no high, no low, no great, no small ; 
He fills, he boimds, connects, and equals all." 

Let me invite yoiir attention to the few following 
lines on the apportionment of separate instincts or 
qualities to different animals, and be good enough to 
observe how the single words clench the whole argu- 
ment. They are as descriptive as the bars of Haydn's 
music in the Oratorio of the Creation : — 



THE POETRY OF POPE. 131 

" What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme, 
The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam ; 
Of smell, the headlong lioness between, 
And hound sagacious on the tainted green ; 
Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood. 
To that which warbles through the vernal wood ; 
The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine. 
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line." 

What a couplet again is that ! It is only about a 
spider ; but I guarantee its immortality. 

If I set down the Terse, the Accurate, the Complete, 
the pungency of the Satiric point, the felicity of the 
well turned Compliment, as the distinctive features of 
Pope's poetical excellence, it should not escape us that 
there are occasions when he reaches»a high degree of 
moral energy and ardor. I have purposely excluded 
from our present consideration all scrutiny and dissec- 
tion of Pope's real inner character. I am aware, that, 
taking it in the most favorable light, it can only be re- 
garded as formed of mixed and imperfect elements ; 
but I cannot refuse to myself the belief that when the 
Poet speaks in such strains as these, they in some de- 
gree reflect and embody the spirit of the Man. I 



132 THE POETRY OF POPE. 

quote from his animated description of the triumph of 
vice : — 

" Let Greatness own her, and she's mean no more ; 
Her birth, her beauty, crowds and courts confess. 
Chaste matrons praise her, and grave bishops bless ; 
In golden chains the willing world she draws, 
And hers the Gospel is, and hers the laws ; 
Mounts the tribunal, lifts her scarlet head, 
And sees pale virtue carted in her stead. 
Lo ! at the wheels of her triumphal car, 
Old England's genius, rough with many a scar, 
Dragg'd in the dust! his arms hang idly round. 
His flag inverted trails along the ground !" 

And, again, with more special reference to himself, 

" Ask you what provocation I have had '! 
The strong antipathy of good to bad. 
When truth or virtue an affront endures, 
Th' affront is mine, my friend, and should be yours. 
Yes, 1 am proud, I must be proud to see. 
Men not afraid of God, afraid of me : 
Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne, 
Yet touch 'd and sham'd by ridicule alone. 
O sacred weapon ! left for truth's defence, 
Sole dread of folly, vice, and insolence; 



THE POETRY OJ? POFE. 133 

To all but heav'n-directed hands denyM, 

The muse may give thee, but the gods must guide : 

Rev'rent I touch thee ! but With honest zeal ; 

To rouse the watchmen of the public weal, 

To virtue's work provoke the tardy Hall, 

And goad the prelate slumbering in his stall. 

Let envy howl, while heav'n's whole chorus sings, 

And bark at honor not conferr'd by kings ; 

Let flatt'ry sick'ning see the incense rise, 

Sweet to the world, and grateful to the skies : 

Truth guards the poet, sanctifies the line, 

And makes Immortal, verse as mean as mine." 

My limits, more than ray materials, warn me that I 
must desist. As, however, with reference to the single 
object which I have all along had in view, I think it 
more politic that I should let the words of Pope, rather 
than my own, leave the last echoes on your ear, I 
should like to conclude this address with his own con- 
cluding lines to perhaps the most important and highly 
wrought of his poems, the " Essay on Man." They 
appear to me calculated to leave an appropriate im- 
pression of that orderly and graceful muse, whose at- 
tractions I have, feebly I know and inadequately, but 
with the honesty and warmth of a thorough sincerity, 



134 THE POETRY OF POPE. 

endeavored to place before you; if I mistake not, you 
will trace in them, as in his works at large, the same 
perfect propriety of expression, the same refined sim- 
plicity of idea, the same chastened felicity of imagery, 
all animated and warmed by that feeling of devotion 
for Bolingbroke, which pervaded his poetry and his 
hfe :— 



" Come then, my friend ! my genius ! come along ; 
Oh master of the poet, and the song ! 
And while the muse now stoops, or now ascends, 
To man's low passions, or their glorious ends, 
Teach me, like thee, in various nature wise, 
To fall with dignity, with temper rise ; 
Porm'd by thy converse, happily to steer 
From grave to gay, from lively to severe ; 
Correct with spirit, elegant with ease, 
Intent to reason, or polite to please. 
Oh ! while along the stream of time thy name 
Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame ; 
Say, shall my little bark attendantjsail, 
Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale ? 
When statesmen, heroes, kings, in dust repose 
Whose sons shall blush their fathers were thy foes, 
Shall then this verse to future age pretend 
Thou wert my guide, philosopher and friend, — 



THE rOETRT OF POPE. 135 

That urg'd by tUee, I turn'd the tuneful art 
From sounds to things, from fancy to the heart ; 
For wit's false mirror held up nature's light ; 
Show'd erring pride, whatever is, is right : 
That reason, passion, answer one great aim ; 
That true self-love and social are the same ; 
That virtue only makes our bliss below ; 
And all our knowledge is ourselves to know." 

Gentlemen of the jury, that is my case. 



^.aM 




-T*'^'* 



6iXl 



>^^^ 




006 0,, 0,7 7 



